Last Wednesday, we traveled to Oss with ten players. Right up until just before the match, it was unclear whether we would play with four men and six women, five against five, or even four against five without Reinier. The lineup was only finalized 30 minutes before the start. After checking the traffic reports, Lotte was disappointed to hear she wouldn’t be playing as a woman.
Once we had properly set up, we started off excellently with two goals from Tom and one from Lara, giving us a 3-0 lead. Midway through the first half, we had maintained our strong start, leading 6-2. Unfortunately, towards the end of the first half, things went a bit downhill, and we went into halftime trailing 7-8. During the break, our player-coach Reinier was very positive. He said we were playing well and that we would win the match if we continued in the same way.
Unfortunately, Oss had other plans and started making tactical substitutions with their midweek team. Up to 12-12, the game remained evenly matched, but Oss then pulled ahead slightly to 16-13. During this phase, Reinier disagreed somewhat with the referee regarding the rules about pushing. Lotte and Bart shot us back into the game, bringing the score to 17-16. There was about a minute and a half left, so the idea was: either force a free pass by committing a foul or let them shoot. Since the referee allowed almost all pushing, getting a free pass was unlikely. Therefore, the defense dropped back, hoping to grab the rebound after a shot. However, the opponent didn’t take a shot in the final minute and a half, and the referee unfortunately didn’t call time-wasting, so we narrowly lost the match by just one goal.
Then it was time to shower, which we did together with the midweek team from KV Wageningen, who had played against the other Oss team at the same time. Unfortunately, just when they were ready to shower, the water suddenly stopped working. Oss went looking for a key to turn the water back on. After about ten minutes of waiting, the water was back on, and we could finally shower and head back to Wageningen.