- Portret
Goalgetters: Frédérique Matla, versatile and coolblooded
The Tulp Hoofdklasse Women broke the 20,000-goal mark in the first half of the season. A great occasion to zoom in on the biggest goal-scoring machines in the women's league. In part 6: Fréderique Matla, versatile and coolblooded.
Frédérique Matla cannot be left out of this series. The Den Bosch striker is the current all-time top scorer among the still active players in the Hoofdklasse. After thirteen seasons, she has 182 goals to her name and that number will rapidly go up to two hundred in the second half of the competition.
Since her debut in the Hoofdklasse in the 2012-2013 season, we have known Matla as a versatile player, with a large collection of hockey weapons. She is almost impossible to get off the ball, has a blazing shot with both her forehand and backhand, is among the best penalty corner shooters in women's hockey and often remains cool from the penalty stroke spot.
Those traits have made her a feared goal scorer, one you rarely see in women's hockey today. In 2019, in an away game against Pinoké, she scored a stunning seven goals in an 8-0 victory, one more beautiful than the other. In doing so, she remained one goal away from the unattainable premier league record of her old teammate Maartje Paumen, who once made eight against Bloemendaal (10-0).
Raoul Ehren, for many years her coach at Den Bosch, once said: 'If she has it on her mind, she can score fifty goals in one season just like that.' In 2020-2021, Matla seemed well on her way to actually reaching fifty. After 11 rounds of play in the Hoofdklasse, she was already at the absurd number of 23 goals.
With that interim record, she was on course to seriously threaten the league record of Lisanne Lejeune and Wietske de Ruiter - 46 goals in one season. Eventually, production slumped a bit after the winter and Matla finished on 35 goals, still her highest number of league goals in a single season.
Ice rabbit
Matla calls herself an ice rabbit. She has no nerves before an important match. 'That is very nice on the one hand, because it makes me less nervous during a final,' she once explained in an interview with the Algemeen Dagblad. 'I am stoic and imperturbable at that moment. Will not easily doubt whether things will work out. But sometimes it's also unfortunate that I feel the same way about a game against Oranje-Rood as I do about an Olympic final.'
The fact that Matla has her nerves perfectly under control in big games is once again demonstrated by recent history. Last year she scored a hat-trick in the decisive play-off match against SCHC and in the years before that she twice took Den Bosch to the national title by scoring a penalty corner in the last seconds of the match.
So in the second half of the competition, the 200-goal mark in the Hoofdklasse is looming. A hurdle Matla will no doubt take smoothly. If she succeeds, she can be mentioned in the same breath as Maartje Paumen (353 goals) and Mijntje Donners (263), the only two Den Bosch players to score more than two hundred times in the Hoofdklasse.
