Apart from three new trialists, Katie Cooper seamlessly slipped back into the team with Dan Rowe enjoying a well-earned break in (even) sunnier climes.

Indeed, the heat was a telling factor; fifteen minutes elapsing before we had the first real chance of the afternoon. Although a breeze was soon created when home ‘keeper Lauren Dolbear reacted quickly to intercept a potentially telling through ball and immediately launched a counterattack. The searing pace of Becs Bell on the left wing ultimately picking out Sammy Quayle, who could only find the side netting.

Georgia Tibble lined one up from just outside the area and left visiting custodian Sian Woods breathing a sigh of relief, as it flew narrowly over the crossbar.

Approaching the mid-way point of the opening period, Quayle dispossessed a Pompey defender in the centre circle and set Chloe Winchester clear. This time however, Woods was called into action by way of a tip over the top that everyone apart from the match officials seemed to see.

Undeterred, the hosts continued to take the game to their guests. Bell consistently caused concern for the Portsmouth backline; discovering Elle Keegan, whose byline delivery almost saw Winchester get a touch and Tibble succeeding in doing so but neither could divert the ball goalwards. Quayle rounded off the move when she dragged wide from the edge of the eighteen yard box.

A brilliant Cooper pass dissected the Blues-clad Blacks’ rearguard, eventually leading to Woods doing well to beat Bell to the ball, followed seconds later by Dolbear parrying a low effort from out wide on the right that flashed dangerously close to the target.

Finally, five minutes shy of the break, Cooper’s corner created havoc, with Linscer putting an end to the madness by locating the bottom corner.

Not that the lead lasted very long, thanks to a rapid response that saw Pompey surge up the other end on a quick breakaway. An accurate, driven cross ultimately beating two black shirts to leave Phoebe Fitzgerald with an easy tap-in.

Although stoppage time nearly resulted in Tibble regaining the home initiative, courtesy of a twenty yarder that didn’t miss by much.

After a brief respite from the hot Summer sun, trialist number 10 slipped in Bell, in the embryonic stages of the following forty-five but Woods caught her curler.

Barely two minutes further on, Linscer’s low effort procured a flag-kick that Tibble took and typically swerved all the way in, despite the best efforts of a travelling defender on the line.

In a clear case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Tibble then virtually repeated the trick, only this time trialist number twenty-one – who was impressive throughout – headed home her second goal in successive matches, to make it three-one.

Fellow first team hopeful, the unnamed red eleven gave Pompey’s right-hand side a brief break when she produced a great block in the box to deny a goalscoring opportunity. Dolbear duly pouncing on the loose ball to tie up any loose ends.

Worthing’s Golden Gloves winner of 2023-’24 then pulled off an incredible save to keep out a long-range rocket and, inside a couple of minutes, soon turned aside another from closer in that Linscer, in a less-familiar looking defensive role, cleared away from anymore (immediate) danger.

Though it only needed a matter of seconds for more good work by Bell, bamboozling the poor Portsmouth backline, to see her near-post shot blocked by netminder Woods, only for Quayle to add her name to the scoresheet and knock in the fourth.

The second-half drinks break left the action momentarily sitting on a cliff-hanger, as Tibble was forced to wait to send in her latest corner-kick, after watching her own attempt kept out by Woods at the expense of one.

Into the last ten minutes of the afternoon, wonderful link-up play between Linscer, Keegan Quayle, and Bell – starting on the halfway line and ending at the byline – failed to get the reward it so richly deserved. The overworked Woods ensured the score remained unchanged, for now at least.

However, Keegan then elected to buy a proverbial ticket for the proverbial raffle, when she caught out the visitor’s last line of defence via a hit from distance, off the inside-left channel, that went under Woods’ despairing dive.

It required a fine recovery tackle to prevent trialist #21’s counter-attack being rounded off by Bell, who’d done everything but bag a goal of her own, before a harsh handball, awarded against Tibble, offered their Hampshire-based opponents a chance from the spot with a mere two minutes left on the clock. Striker Chloe Sheffield gave Dolbear no chance at all when she smashed the subsequent penalty into the top corner.

Woods got behind a decent curling Quayle effort in the game’s dying embers, prior to the Worthing forward illustrating perfectly why you should never give up, even on an apparently lost cause. Chasing and harrying along the inside-right channel, Super Sammy got herself in the right place at the right time when Woods’ kick hit the ever-alert attacking presence to make it two for Quayle and six more of the best for the rampant Rebels.