lofcwomen.com

O's skipper Grace Alexander (grey) battling away at Welling Utd.

Having lost a tight game on the previous Sunday, away at Tier Six club Hutton, Orient's senior women's side took on another Tier Six team in the shape of Welling Utd. This time it was in the first round of London's Capital Cup. Having watched the men serve up the same toothless stuff yesterday at Northampton, we were really looking forward to some cheer from at least one Leyton Orient team.
The team-sheet was published at 1pm and it showed SEVEN regular first teamers missing from the list. Both keepers were out, due (we believe) to concussion protocols as both had been flattened in brutal collisions recently. Half the back line were gone along with other key players. I thought this was not going to be good but Larry Peterson, the guy who goes to the games for lofcwomen.com, disagreed and formed the opinion that we were strong. It turns out he knows better!
Top names like Layla-May Duffield, Courtney Miller, Stephanie McCaffrey, Hannah Stone, Delainy Savill, Tayla Gencarelli and Thara Said are all established first teamers but none were available for this game. We noticed that youth keeper Lottie Behan had only just been added to the club's list of registered players - and there she was, straight into the senior side as Goal-keeper.

Given we'd played three games so far this season with only a penalty to show in the "goals for" column, it took returning top-scorer Leanne Bates just five minutes to put that statistic to bed as she took a pass from Shona Chitate Samuriwo and showed no mercy to the out-rushing Welling keeper to calmly slot the ball home. Welcome back Leanne, that's just what the doctor ordered. She went on to make life difficult for the home ladies by putting in a good solid No.9 performance.
We had a guest commentator at the match, "Dulcet" Thor, a qualified coach, he was providing the insights and reports for the lofcwomen.com Live-Text service. If you'd like to see a comprehensive blow-by-blow account of the game plus a pre-match run-down, you can read it all at: Welling Live Text . It was written and posted as the game proceeded. If you'd like to follow along at future matches but won't be at the game, you can do that best by following our regular Live-Text broadcasts. The next best thing to being there!
As became clear from Thor's commentary and from the remarks made by players and onlookers on the day, this was a first class team performance. To keep a clean sheet when playing away at a higher rated club tells its own story about how the re-shuffled personnel worked together as a team by playing their normal passing game and looked comfortable in possession. They needed to defend a fair bit in the second half as the home club put in the effort and were backed by a gale-force wind but our girls worked hard off the ball and never allowed Welling any guilt-edged chances. They had a number of shots and half chances but there lay another part of the story....

A big 'thank you' to Thor for coming to the game and helping out with commentary. Later he wrote this....
Well I've got back home now and I must say I enjoyed that game. We've improved since I last saw them and whilst we "may" have lost some good players to a higher level the patterns of play were good. The defence is much more composed, happily playing out from the back, and Dohnut (message board reference - Ed) as they moved it from one side to the other they never once went back the other way!
The keeper Lottie Behan was unreal on her debut, a player from our U18's who played like she's been there all her life. I said to her parents that they should be proud of her and what's she's accomplished today.
Our number 11 Sion is a real player. She has pace, power and can finish. If I had been playing I'd have just been whipping that ball out to the left as she was literally ripping them to shreds.
Shona in the middle of the pitch is a proper leader, always talking, always pointing things out, making sure the team continue to do their jobs. Whilst she isn't the captain, she defo falls into the category of having 11 captains on the pitch.
We fully deserved to win today and the performance was really good from every single player and they should be pleased with the performance that each of them put in individually and collectively.

Two names: Lottie Behan and Sion Kamiende.
Lottie was drafted in from the girls' youth side to deputise for the battered first team keepers - and she kept a clean sheet. She stopped everything, she picked out high crosses, dashed out to clear dangerous though balls and saved in-bound bombs which had gale-force winds behind them. Young Lottie commanded her six-yard box which led us all to believe there was no way she would be beaten today. More importantly, Welling's players eventually got the same feeling and they never did get one past her.
As we are not an official part of the club, we can say this... The two regular first team keepers cannot be regarded as automatic shoe-ins when they become available. Lottie raised a lot of eyebrows in this game.
Sorry about the crappy picture, it's all we have for now. If you have a better one, send it in please.
The second teen is Sion Kamiende. Sion was a regular in the under 18s last year and is still registered to play there. However, in view of today's performance, there's no way she'll lose her senior place now. Pace, Power and finishing are her trademarks and she showed us all how we need to be exploiting those skills. Sion outpaced the Welling defence a few times including on two key occasions where she also beat the advancing keeper with nicely taken goals.
The day at Welling and, in particular, the performances of Lottie Behan and Sion Kamiende were much appreciated by Larry and Thor who watched the match as the footy correspondents for lofcwomen.com. This made our Live-Text service such a lively place to enjoy the game and demonstrated how rapid is the rise in standards within women's football. These are exciting times, we trust our club will prove to be good enablers for what will come over the next few years.

In order to get an idea of how the whole women's football arena is shaping up and our part in it, we like to keep tabs of the other teams in our league, the Greater London Women's Football League. Here are the scores from Sunday 20th October 2024:

The big clash between Camden and South London was postponed due to Capital Cup commitments but Islington Boro lost their unbeaten record by going down 2:1 to an improving Tooting Bec side who take over Boro's No 2 slot in the league.
Comets continue to move up from their faltering start to the season with a regulation 3:0 defeat of Brentford B.
Camden and Islington (CandI) suffered another slaughter and now occupy the bottom spot with zero points and a GD of minus 29. There must be a threat to their long-term ability to stay the course in the Premier division. A silly situation has arisen in that Headstone Manor, despite declaring themselves as having folded, are still quoted in the GLWFL league table and, despite not playing, have moved up a spot from the bottom position thanks to their 'superior' GD to that of CandI's.
The up-to-date league table is available HERE.

It's back to Greater London Premier league action next Sunday against fellow strugglers Brentford B. They are one spot above us but have played six games from which they've amassed four points. We have only played the two games so far and remain on zero points. Confidence must be high in the O's camp that we'll see points on the board next week. It's a home match to be played at Buckhurst Hill, kick off at 2pm. We'd love to see you at the match but if you can't make it, don't forget our Live-Text service will be up and running for the duration of the match.
According to our Junior Premier League online source, there are no league games next Saturday 26th October 2024, we are not aware (yet) of any cup or friendly games involving our under 16 and under 18 sides. If you know different, please get in touch.

A big thank you to our contributors for your valued input! If you have any comments related to the women's teams, we'd be very happy to hear from you. You can reach out via email, 'X', Instagram, or WhatsApp to Larry on 07802 6408900. All the links are available on our home page.
We look forward to your views.