Field of Dreams and Broken Fences by Aaron Moore

Author:Aaron Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

True Blue

IPSWICH TOWN Women found themselves drawn against Women’s Super League side Manchester City in the 2019/20 FA Women’s Cup. The Tractor Girls had navigated their way through several rounds by beating Royston Town, Norwich City, AFC Basildon, Chichester City, Portsmouth, and Huddersfield Town before being rewarded with the tie of a lifetime.

The journey for Ipswich had begun in the second qualifying round as they were drawn against Eastern Region Women’s Football League side Royston. The Crows were a level below Ipswich, but the Tractor Girls had to stay focused on the task in hand if they were going to make it through.

Although they had only taken a 2-0 lead into the half-time break, with goals from Maddie Biggs and Eloise King, a further five goals in the second half from King, Biggs, Lindsey Cooper and a double from Amanda Crump helped them on to a huge 7-0 win.

The big victories didn’t end there though as the Blues eased past their East Anglian rivals Norwich City, winning 6-1, while they scored a further 11 goals against Basildon and Chichester, winning 5-0 and 6-0 respectively. The victories had made their incredible run seem easy, but Royston were their only lower-league opponents; Norwich and Basildon were in the same division as Ipswich, the FA Women’s National League Division One South East, while Chichester could be found in the Southern Premier Division, the league above.

‘We had played six games in the cup before being drawn against City,’ said manager Joe Sheehan. ‘We hadn’t done anything differently and treated every game like we would when playing in the league. We needed to do what we did best, whether that was against teams in the league above or below. We managed to play pretty well in each round and progress through the competition.’

After getting beyond Chichester in the second round proper, Town found themselves facing another tough game against a side in the league above, Portsmouth. Pompey hadn’t been doing brilliantly in the Southern Premier Division, eventually winning five of the nine games they played during the 2019/20 season, but Ipswich still found it tough. Paige Peake’s free kick was enough to send them into the fourth round proper, setting up a tie with Huddersfield who had only progressed through two rounds themselves. The tier-three side had begun their run in the second round proper, edging past Stoke City on penalties after a 1-1 draw, before they narrowly beat Loughborough Foxes on the road. The fourth-round tie was expected to be closer than it actually was, but Ipswich continued their goalscoring form as they netted four against the Terriers. Biggs scored three of those in the first half as she punished poor defending from the hosts, before Natasha Thomas also scored to seal the win at the John Smith’s Stadium.

The impressive run had to come to an end, however, and it did in the fifth round after a 10-0 defeat to Manchester City. The strength of the Women’s Super League side had proven too much

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.