Hockey: Old Girls in dominant form

Old Girls' Laura Douglas keeps the ball in play during the wet and wild round six encounter against Mangapai. Photo / Michael Cunningham

An encounter between the premier women's division's top ranked team, ChillTech Old Girls, and lowest ranked team, Echonorth Mangapai, resulted in a convincing, 15-0, win for the in form Old Girls outfit.

The sodden LJ Hooker Turf was an extra hurdle for both teams, however this didn't deter the creative brushstroke of Old Girls' coach Alan Lints and his squad of up-and-comers.

"We blooded three new girls from our B team so we had three girls that are under-16s-18s play today - that was a good opportunity," Lints said.

"For us, when the pitch was waterlogged in the first half of the match, it was good. I think our girls showed great patience [and] they played to the conditions.

"Laura Douglas, again, scored a lot of great goals consistently [as well as] Charlene Adams [who] just knows how to play around that circle edge and in the circle edge she's dynamite."

Faced with a difficult job, Mangapai's captain Sandra Mortensen was pleased with her team's ability to persevere.

"The girls are slowly getting confident [and] we're coming together as a team better.

"After the first two or three games the team morale has got a lot better. They're starting to believe in themselves now and they have the skills."

Old Girls removed their goalie in the last quarter.

"For us it was like she's not going to touch the ball [so] we wanted to put some pressure on our defence and see how they could handle it," Lints said of the change in tack.

"Defensively we had very little work. I thought we'd take the keeper off for the last quarter [and] I guess by taking the goalie off we provided another goal scoring opportunity [for Mangapai]."

New rules, introduced this week, dictate each game must be played over four quarters instead of two halves.

In other premier women's division games, Gilmore Brown Springfield snatched a narrow, 2-1, win over Real Deal Maungakaramea while Whangarei Girls' High School beat Club Auto Hikurangi 5-1 to stay in the top three.

In the premier men's 9s division, Bream Bay United faced an even challenge when they took on Currie Electrical Springfield, the final score 7-all.

In the other match of the round, Dempster and Hill Electrical Maungakaramea managed a good, 4-1, win over Morris and Morris Mangapai.