23rd September 2019
CTLFC Reserves 2
AEK Boco 0
By Ben Ware
Cam Cheal’s Second XI picked up their first win of the South West Regional Women’s Football League season after 2 unanswered goals from Leonie Gough against AEK Boco at the DN Fire Stadium.
Cheltenham started well, enjoying the majority of possession and peppering the Boco goal with shots. The first corner of the game produced the first goal as a Caitlin Marron corner was prodded home from close range by Gough after ten minutes.
Shortly after, Robins defender Anna Barnes was sin binned for kicking the ball away, reducing the team to ten players for the next ten minutes.
Boco grew into the game but a resilient defence and brilliant goalkeeping display kept them at bay. A number of threatening balls were dealt with convincingly by a confident defence, limiting AEK Boco’s attacking threat greatly over the 90 minutes.
Half time: Robins Reserves 1-0 AEK Boco
The second half was much more even with Boco making a few good chances with goalkeeper Molly Ripley on hand to keep them out with the help of Elle-Mae Simpson (pictured) and Abbi Barker at centre back.
A stop-start period of the game followed with injuries for both sides; Hannah Marshall forced off with an ankle injury after a nasty tackle.
Cheltenham then grabbed their second 20 minutes from time, Jess Wadey confidently winning the ball well in the air, setting up Leonie Gough to slot in off the post.
The last 20 minutes were more comfortable for Cheltenham with Hannah Dix coming on in the last 10 minutes to help see out the game and secure their first win of the season.
Cheltenham Town Ladies Reserves: M. Ripley, A. Symanowsky, E. Simpson, A. Barker, A. Barnes, J. Lepore, J. Wadey, C. Reilly, C. Marron, L. Gough, H. Galpin. Rolling subs used: H. Marshall, H. Dix, A. Boyce, R. Smith, L. Amarquaye.
Reaction
“It’s fantastic to get our first win, we’ve worked hard for weeks in training and matches and to finally see it come through is brilliant. It was an all-round strong performance and we really earned it today. Both Cam and I are happy with what we saw today but we know there’s always room for improvement and we look forward to seeing how the girls move forward and how they build on this performance.
“It’s very important for the development of our players, for a fairly young squad to win that sort of game will be great for the girls. This shows that we can win, it shows that our style of football wins games and it shows that we can defend resiliently and make the chances to win games, things are starting to look good.
Defensively we looked good today, it was a commanding performance in goal from Molly Ripley, it’s the loudest she’s been and she dealt with everything brilliantly. Elle-Mae Simpson and Abbi Barker dealt with most of the long balls, Jess Wadey and Jen Lepore controlled the midfield and our front three were fantastic, I wish I had the time to talk about every player involved but I’d be going on for hours.
“I look forward to the future and building on this result, let’s get the momentum going and let’s show them what we can do.
“It was good, I think we finally started playing as a team and we played really good football with some great passages of play, instead of panicking we kept the ball and we played around them and got the result we wanted.
“Days like this really do help our development. I was worried that the Reserves wasn’t going to help me develop, with going in and out between training with the first team and you can see a difference in quality but we’ve really started working as a team which will help to develop players both technically and tactically.
“I hope so yeah, it’s a great group of players and I think we can really go on to achieve something, what we needed was the first win to get us going, to get that momentum and kick us on into the season, it’ll be great to see what we can do!”
