ALDERLEY Edge Hockey Club women's team beat previously undefeated Pendle Forest 1-0 at The Edge on Saturday.

This was an important win for Edge in the Investec Women’s National League Conference North.

This was Pendle Forest’s second only defeat in their last 100 matches.

Edge came out strong early with quick passes up the lines and into the D.

This built team confidence and from then on the ladies knew they could take the game.

Great pressure without the ball and strong fast movements with the ball led to Edge creating numerous circle entries in the first quarter.

Edge opened the scoring with a goal from Immy Walker with great ‘ugly zone’ finishing.

From this moment on, Edge remained calm and composed while keeping the pressure on Pendle high up the pitch.

This continued for the rest of the game with numerous Edge shots off in the D (the most in the season according to the Edge statistician.)

In defence, player-of-the-match Sarah Hopkin played a major role distributing the ball with ease while not letting Pendle forwards pressure get to her.

No matter how hard Pendle Forest tried, they couldn’t find a way to score.

The men's team visited Preston on Saturday for an England Hockey National League Conference encounter in what was a bottom-of-the-table six-pointer.

Having been held to a draw in the reverse fixture, Alderley were looking to break a streak of four straight defeats.

Alderley started quickly, dominating possession and creating several early chances.

Eventually the deadlock was broken by a well taken goal by Oli Jones, who rounded the keeper before passing the ball into the empty net.

The lead was shortlived and Preston were level after Edge gave away a poor penalty corner.

The Preston goal knocked the wind out of Alderley’s sails and Preston soon took the lead when Alderley failed to clear the ball, it came back into the D and the Preston striker fired it into the bottom corner.

Alderley will have felt hard done by after the amount of chances they created in the first half, but unfortunately poor marking and defending discipline were their downfall .

Knowing that they needed a result out of the game, Alderley should have come out for the second half all guns firing.

Despite being a man down, Preston took the ball from the pushback and through poor marking and weak defending they bundled their way through and scored without Alderley touching the ball, making it 3-1.

Despite good spells of possession, Alderley failed to get a goal back.

The team continue to struggle to create good goal-scoring opportunities in the final 23.

Preston got their fourth goal and with it Alderley’s chances of a fightback disappeared.

At 4-1 the score did not reflect the two teams, but as has been the case for the last month or so, poor defending and a lack of confidence is affecting the lads.

Alderley did manage a late consolation goal through a McCormick penalty corner drag flick, but the game had gone by that point.

While recent results are not reflecting Edge’s performances in general, they need to defend better when under pressure.

Next up is a must win game against Didsbury Northern at The Edge on Sunday, 2pm pushback.