ST PAT’S showed impressive resilience last Saturday as hit back from nine-goal loss to register a 5-2 win over Lithgow Zig Zag in women’s Premier League Hockey.

Today Pat’s coach Chris Conroy is crossing his fingers that his players can carry that momentum into a crucial match with Orange Ex-Services, a side who are still trying to repair the damage from their last match against the Saints.

Ex-Services actually won the contest 3-1, but the result was later amended due to a registration error, costing the Orange team four competition points.

Conroy believes they are the next-best side in the competition behind Lithgow Panthers, the team who beat his own outfit 11-2 a fortnight ago.

“They are a strong side, they are very accurate with their passing and move the ball with good speed. They work off each other, use overhead balls and everything,” he said.

“They’re pretty good and without that result being changed against us, they’d be second on the ladder and pretty close to Panthers, so that shows you what they’re capable of.

“Against us in the first round I actually thought we played pretty well and we still finished up going down 3-1, so they deserve a fair bit of respect.”

Conroy admitted his side were left in a state of shock by the magnitude of their defeat at the hands of Lithgow Panthers and said at the time that it would be tough to hit back from such a heavy loss.

But their response was superb away from home against a Zig Zag side who themselves had plenty to play for.

“That result was a big blow for us, but then Souths copped basically the same treatment last weekend and we felt a bit better about ourselves,” he said.

“We bounced back really well to get a win and get our season going again, you can’t ask much more of your players than that.

“The first time we played Ex-Services, even though we went down on the scoreboard, I thought we actually played pretty well against them. It was a hot day and I think that was a bit of a factor in how we played at the end of the game.

“If we can match that level and maybe just improve on it a little bit, I’m confident we can get a good result from this game.”

St Pat’s will do battle with Ex-Services at Bob Roach Field from 12.20pm today.