13 July 2026
Pre-season match review
Brentwood 14:1 L Orient
Jody Buckley took his Orient women's side into this season's first friendly game at Brentwood Town FC on a hot Sunday afternoon. The hosts are a mature side who will play at Tier 5 in the regional leagues. The O's side looked to be very youthful for the most part and were a mix of youngsters plus a few experienced new signings.
Brentwood also counted Orient's top goal-scorer from last season (who also top scored in the entire Greater London WFL) among their number in the form of Poppy Binding. It was also evident to the LOFCwomen.com crew looking on from the touchline that Brentwood's No 16 (sorry, we don't have names) was clearly of professional standard.
Contrast this with Orient's youngsters and new signings Stef Paci, Sharice Duncan and Gracie Hickman who were playing their first game for the Os. It became clear the E10 ladies were not yet ready to challenge a solid Tier 5 group and that made for a long and difficult 90 minutes. We're not sure if other recent signing Lily Augier played.
For a blow-by-blow report of the game, you can review that from our
LIVE-TEXT page.
An overview
Frankly, there's not much to be learnt from a who-did-what analysis, but overall, despite the score, our correspondent Larry Peterson reports that there were elements of quality on view from time to time, indeed to score a goal and make some other chances whilst under such a bombardment is encouraging. Our No 5 (sorry, we have no names) did impress our reporter Ben James despite being overrun at times.
We did see Orient players from last season in the form of Ruby Abela and regular under-18s keeper Lottie Behan. Both gave their best but neither would have enjoyed this game. We believe the bulk of the team was comprised of youth players from last season's Maldon side, they were managed and coached by Jody and Marc Wilson so will have been known to them, teenager Libby Keeler put in a lot of hard work but, for the group in red shirts, this game was a bridge a bit too far.
Next weeks' friendly,
On Sunday July 19th, we return to the scene of last season's Capital Cup final victory - the home ground of Dorking FC. We are booked to play their 2nd team who operated at "County" level last season - roughly on a par with Tier 7. We understand Jody intends to confirm a number of permanent signings to the women's group between now and then, we look forward to that.
A full compliment of LOFCwomen.com staffers and friends will be there to follow and report on the progress. Of course, if you want to follow the ladies' progress, we will be running a LIVE-TEXT show on the day. More info about that in few days.