Catterick Garrison FC Girls win Championship decider...

Catterick Garrison Football Club were met with a Knaresborough Celtic Football Club sign at the main road entrance and then followed a track to behold Celtic’s wonderful, gleaming, new pavilion, smart green livery and playing fields. The evening was promising a thriller as the Garrison had a simple task and that was to get one point out of the double header of six to claim the Girls U14’s League Championship. While Celtic needed to win both games to also win the Championship! It was all ‘hammer and tongs’ in the opening exchanges with Celtic’s Molly Pickard giving the home supporters something to cheer about when taking the lead after 4 minutes. A freak looping header of an own goal got Catterick back into the game at 1.1.
Celtic like to exploit the wings and get crosses in and this paid dividends with a great goal from Lydia White giving Celtic the comfort of a goal lead at 2.1. More calamity was to befall Catterick as their Middlesborough Academy trial-list defender fell foul of a hamstring injury, and with no subs available, reduced CGFC to 6 players. Despite this set back they managed to pull a goal back just on half-time to level the score at 2.2. John Reynolds’ work for the half time team talk was easy - the girls were up for it. So were Frank Eckert’s girls so an enthralling second half was sure to be in store. And so it proved with Celtic’s constant pressure on the obdurate blue end of Catterick not quite reaping rewards. The Garrison were visibly tiring yet their grit and courage was on display for all to see and produced a killer blow from an Amy strike to nudge them into a 3.2 lead. Try as they might Celtic couldn’t crack the Garrison defense and joy ensued at the final whistle as it signaled a well deserved Championship win.