HOCKEY
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SOUTHS picked up a much-needed women's Premier League Hockey win on Saturday, posting a 2-0 away victory against Lithgow Zig Zag.
Scoring opportunities came few and far between for Souths, but they seized two chances which made the difference in the end.
Both of Souths' goals came within the opening 15 minutes of the match.
Souths coach Melissa Bestwick said her team remained on top after going ahead 2-0, but struggled to deal with Zig Zag's style of defence.
"We probably had five or six other chances to score in the rest of the game. Zig Zag scrambled really well in defence, which is what they do. The play was between the two 25s for much of the game, it was very scrappy," she said.
"We really struggled to put two passes together the whole game with Zig Zag pressing us with their defence. The things that we'd done well over the last couple of weeks left us. We got frustrated when we weren't able to play our normal game.
"I don't think we made our first circle penetration in the second half until there was about 10 minutes to go, and we only had one penalty corner in the half."
Ali Stanford made the most of Souths' early possession when she finished off a nice string of passes to make it 1-0.
Sarah Watterson scored the second of the two blues' goals just minutes later in similar fashion, strong build up from her team-mates once more creating the opportunity.
From there the chances dried up and while the visitors remained in control, they struggled to get the ball inside the circle.
While happy to get the points, Bestwick knew the final margin could have been greater if her team didn't let Zig Zag dictate the style of the game.
"We've always managed to start off our games really well, but we need to keep it going," she said.
"We let them get on top of us and in our face. They always had 11 players behind the ball and we struggled to cope with that.
"They were playing the way that we expected them to and that was whatever they could to frustrate our girls. We could have been four or five up at half-time."
SOUTHS 2 (Ali Stanford, Sarah Watterson) defeated LITHGOW ZIG ZAG 0