The Eagles 1st team secured a place in the hat for the Nottinghamshire Women’s County Cup Quarter Finals after a ‘game of two halves’ performance against the University of Nottingham Women this afternoon.

Despite a cheeky recce of our student opposition last Sunday a virtually entirely different squad turned up at Calverton this afternoon for our 2nd Round match up.🙄😂

Our ladies setup in our usual formation with Emily coming in for Ciara in goal, Hannah H into central midfield and Ellie-Mae returning on the left side of midfield.
Also with injuries and unavailability Jen once again stepped back out of retirement and one of our exciting young 16 year olds Autumn (making her first appearance in a Senior game squad for the Eagles) made up the bench.

The early stages of the game were reasonably even but it was clear from the outset our opposition from the NGLL Senior Division 2 were not here to make the numbers up.

As the game progressed after we had missed a series of early chances our student opposition showing no small amount of skill and endeavour, started to win the battles all over the pitch and took a deserved lead. Our ladies were chasing shadows and were so far off the pace. In fact we were very lucky to go in just the one goal down at the break after another well worked passing move resulted in a great shot coming back off the woodwork.

Our ladies needed to regroup, a few harsh words were said and everyone in the dressing room knew we would have to improve dramatically if we were going to turn the game round.

Fortunately the management team got the desired response from the ladies and we started to pass the ball better, were keeping better possession and looked much more up for the battle after the interval.

Therefore it was no surprise when 17 year old Lydia snuck a low shot under the keeper for 1-1 and when Demi-Leigh’s long shot went through the keepers hands we had turned the scoreline around.

On came Jen for Holly and Autumn for Mollie as we managed the latter stages of the match with only minor scares.

We finished the game 2-1 winners and our 2nd half performance resulted in progress in the County Cup.

Player of the Match went to Ellie-Mae who never stopped running all afternoon and performed both her attacking and defensive duties as requested and did so much unselfish additional running off the ball.

Finally a special mention about something our club is very proud of. On the back of Rosie’s fantastic performances in recent weeks for the Flyers, we finished today’s difficult cup tie with a 16 and a 17 year old on the pitch.

Lydia at 17 has been a revelation since joining the club in the Summer and although it was Autumn’s first taste of Senior football today at the tender age of 16 (just) neither player looked out of place playing alongside older, more experienced players.

The old adage ‘if you are good enough, you are old enough’ rings true at our football club and we hope to continue to bring our talented younger players (of which there are many) through the age groups into the Senior section in the future.

Finally, a massive thank you to Vicki and Laura (U16’s Lightning management) for encouraging and supporting Autumn this week to make what we hope will be the first of many more performances for our Senior sides in the future.⚽️🦅💪