18th March 2019
Cheltenham Town Ladies FC 4-2 Almondsbury Ladies FC
Cheltenham Town Ladies will compete in their fourth successive GFA Women’s Trophy final next month after overcoming an enthusiastic Almondsbury side.
The Ladies started brightly and Lauren Ellis opened the scoring after only three minutes. However the gusty conditions made it hard for both sides and it took only the 20th minute for a second Cheltenham goal.
A good build up from the defence saw Ella Hitchcox thread a perfect ball into the path of Annie Martin and the Ladies’ top scorer netted her 23rd of the season.
Almondsbury gained hope after an ambitious long-range strike sailed over stand-in keeper Sam Morris.
HT: Almondsbury 1-2 Cheltenham Town
Within moments of the restart and Almondsbury were level. A bobbly backpass caused Sam Morris problems and her attempts to save it were not enough to prevent the equaliser.
Cheltenham regained their lead on 61’ with a sweetly struck effort from the edge of the box from Kayleigh Hateley (pictured), after an earlier attempt was flagged offside.
Manager Alex Cheal was using his roll on roll off substitutes shrewdly and Ellie Briscoe was causing the hosts headaches down the right hand side.
Cheltenham were now in the ascendancy and Ella Hitchcox was denied by a combination of keeper and defender with ten minutes to go.
The cup final place was secured in the last five minutes when the tireless Annie Martin chased a long ball and held off the defender to beat the onrushing keeper.
Final score: 2-4.
Alex Cheal was sanguine about his team’s performance: “To be fair, we have played better and lost. But the weather and pitch conditions proved to be a great equaliser and prevented us playing our usual pass and move style. Having said that our stand in keeper didn’t have anything to do.
“it is fantastic to be back at GFA HQ for the final and I can assure everyone that our players will be well up for it.”
Team: Morris, Wiltshire, Dolloway, Leask, Brown, Hateley, Fensome, Ellis, Butterfield, Hitchcox, Martin, Walters, Purvis, Briscoe.
