Arsenal ladies dominate again

It was top versus bottom in the Gulf Weekly Ladies Football League this week, when the Arsenal Ladies with their 100 per cent record so far took on the winless Seef Dental.

However, as proof, if any was needed, that this League is tremendously competitive every week, the game was heading for a goalless draw before Sam Rule headed home from a corner with seconds to go to steal all three points for her team and break the Seef Dental’s hearts.

The Arsenal Ladies dominated for most of the game, but brilliant goalkeeping from Mollie Bednarowski, coupled with fine defensive work from Hanne Hansen and her colleagues kept the chances at bay until the very end.

They managed to carve out a few openings themselves, through Sara Jalal and Alaa Dirazi, but most of their evening was spent on defensive duties.

Chance after chance came and went for the Ladies, with Kajysa Svennson striking a post, Rama Salem having a goal-bound shot deflected over, Reema Al Qassab having a header superbly saved, amongst others, but despite their heroics, the Seef Dental team could not hold on for the final seconds when Rules struck her vital goal to keep the Arsenal Ladies clear at the top of the league.

Hugely improved RCSI played against last year’s winners Venus, but fell behind very early on through an unstoppable free kick by Lamees Saqqa, and then again in the sixth minute by a fine header from Hana Aburoos.

Both Maryam Haji and Dana Alassi had chances for RCSI, but Venus continued to press for more goals and made the RCSI defence work hard to maintain the score at 2-0 at half time.

RCSI started the second half slowly and were punished for it. Within two minutes Hana Aburoos turned her defender and fired her shot into the corner of the net.

The RCSI girls continued to battle hard, and with 10 minutes remaining brought on coach Alana McConologue, who has played a huge part in this teams improvement this season, to try to salvage something from the game. Unfortunately for her and her team, though, the Venus girls stayed strong at the back and took the points to regain second place in the table on goal difference.

So, with three games to go, any one of the Arsenal Ladies , Arsenal U21s and Venus can still lift the title, but the Arsenal Ladies need only one point from their remaining two games to secure success.

Next week sees Seef Dental facing RCSI, with the Arsenal U21s playing Venus in a game that could decide the title.