Evado Studios Women’s Match Report: Jenkins’ Hat Trick, Sandhu’s Silver Service, and Seven Goals as Royals Stun Box Hill
No one – not even the most partisan of Royals supporters – expected it to go like this.
Box Hill United came to Cross Keys as reigning champions, on top of the league. They left shellshocked.
The opening was a picture-perfect set-piece routine. Akeisha Sandhu’s near-post delivery from the tenth-minute corner found Bronte Peel timing her run perfectly, the flick on flying past the keeper and into the side netting at the back post.
Three minutes later, the Maggie Jenkins show began. Back from the injury scare that took her off at thirty-six minutes a week earlier, she pounced on a scrappy Box Hill clearance, controlling an awkward ricochet superbly, and finishing into the bottom right corner.
Jenkins’ second was a marvellous team goal. A passing sequence through Kelli McGroarty, Ayano Koizumi and Cobi Wilbert worked the ball wide to Sandhu on the left, the first-time cross found Jenkins waiting at the right distance, and the finish was clinical. The 26th minute, three-nil, and the league leaders were chasing shadows.
The hat-trick arrived on 38, and it arrived through persistence. Another Sandhu set-piece delivery into the danger area, an initial Box Hill clearance, McGroarty hooking the ball back into the box, and Jenkins meeting the half-chance with a left-footed strike that thumped the post and rebounded for her to convert on the follow-up. The New Zealand international is loving life in NPLW Victoria – substituted at the interval, she has 5 goals in her first 81 minutes of league action.
With Jenkins off the pitch, McGroarty carried it. Fifty-eight minutes, Peel cut inside the box and forced a strong save from the Box Hill keeper, the rebound dropped to McGroarty, and she bundled it home from close range. Eight minutes later, McGroarty scored again, this time cleverly evading her marker to meet a Sandhu corner unmarked at the back post and directing a firm header past the keeper to make it six. Sandhu’s afternoon now reading three direct set-piece assists, plus the open-play cross for Jenkins’s second. Four of the seven goals from through her pinpoint deliveries.
The seventh was a gift for Grace Maher, as she forced a turnover from a Box Hill goal kick, before Sydney Minarik netted a consolation goal on eighty-nine.
The Royals move to second on the ladder with a performance that will turn heads. Next up, a trip to face Boroondara at Carey Grammar.
Up the Royals.