Women’s FA Cup Defeat
Posted by on 22 October 2023
The Eagles 1st team bowed out of the Women’s F.A. Cup at the Third Qualifying Round stage this afternoon at sunny Calverton after a 4-3 penalty shoot out loss to Beaumont Park, post a 1-1 draw in normal time.
Not dissimilar to the previous round our ladies served up a real ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ performance again and went into the interval lucky to be only one goal in arrears at 1-0.
Whether our ladies froze in front of a bumper crowd of over 150 or not, only they will know but we struggled to get any foothold in the game from the first whistle.
Emily once again started between the sticks with Emma and Amy returning to the starting 11.
Unfortunately in such a big game our ladies were hesitant, second best and simply not at the races. We constantly gave the ball away and looked nervous in possession throughout the half and deservedly went in a goal down.
If a team ever needed the half time break this was us today. A few harsh words were spoken and the girls were challenged to relax, improve dramatically and show some fight.
The management team talk about performance a lot, even above results and everyone agreed we hadn’t been good enough.
Therefore our 2nd half performance was always going to be important, even if it didn’t turn out to be enough for us to progress further in the competition.
Pleasingly our ladies were a completely different outfit after the break and created numerous chances. Our visitors were indebted to their goalkeeper on numerous occasions to hold onto their slender lead.
However, it was from one of our attacks that a shot was blocked with a hand and the resultant penalty was expertly dispatched into the left hand corner, by the current competition top scorer Tasha (16 goals).
We were now really in the ascendancy and attacked at will as Beaumont began to tire. Unfortunately we ran out of time in our search for a winning goal and competition rules state that ties should be decided by the lottery of penalties after 90 minutes.
So at the end of proceedings it just wasn’t to be for our ladies and we wish Beaumont Park all the best in the 1st Round proper next month.
Special thanks for all the support today from all spectators, players, managers, coaches and officials from our brilliant football club who came out in numbers to support our ladies.
Player of the Match went to Tasha Leach.
⚽️💜🦅
