Match Report: Caledonia Steel Queens 10 - DMUK Widnes Wild Women 1 (WNIHL Div2N)

The Caledonia Steel Queens and Widnes Wild Women after the first ever WNIHL game to be played in Edinburgh (Photo by Steel Queens IHC)  

Saturday 14th October  - WNIHL Div2 North: Caledonia Steel Queens 10 – DMUK Widnes Wild Women 1

The DMUK Widnes Wild women’s team underwent a baptism of fire on their first ever visit to Edinburgh as they suffered a 10-1 defeat at the hands of the Caledonia Steel Queens on Saturday.

The Steel Queens are a new team in the division for this season, having originally started out as a University team and Saturday saw their first ever league game.  That match faced off at the somewhat unsociable hour of 10.15pm, although that was actually an improvement - as far as the Wild women were concerned - on the original start time of 7.30pm on the Sunday, which would have meant getting home on the Monday morning milk train.

Victoria Connelly (#88) was the
MVP for the Wild Women 

The game saw the Wild women on the back foot for much of the time but overall gave a good account of themselves. They were heavily outshot over the course of the 60 minutes playing time but, despite this, they actually took the lead on 17 minutes with a goal from Victoria Connelly and the score remained 0-1 to Widnes at the first period break.

The Steel Queens scored their first ever league goal on 23 minutes then edged into the lead with a further strike on 36 minutes.  With the score standing at 2-1 at the end of the second period, there was still hope of a Wild fightback but that was all scuppered with two quick Caledonia goals within 10 seconds of each other right at the start of the third period.

More goals followed in quick succession and, by the end of a disastrous final 20 minutes, the Wild women found themselves 10-1 down.

Over the course of the game, the Steel Queens outshot Widnes by 78 to 21 but overworked netminder Stephanie Drinkwater put in an heroic performance in the Wild goal and stopped an incredible 68 of them to end up with an 87.18 Save Percentage.

The Wild women are next in action on Saturday 4th November when they travel across the Pennines to face the Leeds Roses.  

After that, they have games away to Sheffield Shadows (12th November) and Telford Wrekin Raiders (25th November) before their next home game on Sunday 10th December when they entertain Kingston Diamonds at Planet Ice Widnes.