Port Vale Ladies Vs. Tamworth Women Reflections

Wed 18 Aug 2021 - 10:14AM

Ryan Hamilton's thoughts on Tamworth Women's win against Port Vale Ladies on Sunday 15th August 2021.

Sunday’s win was another good step in the right direction for us during preseason. It gave us a chance to rotate slightly, given opportunities to some players who we wanted to see more of and they took their chances well. Danni getting to start in her favoured position as a ten, did really well scoring a hat trick and assisting one too, Grace starting as a nine carried on her good form, grabbed another goal and was a nightmare for Port Vale to defend against so it was really pleasing on that front as well as Amy in goal, another strong performance, definitely challenged more this week so she had a lot of decisions to make and overall she did really well, at sixteen playing back to back games for the first team against regional level sides is a credit to her it’s great for her development. Likewise having players starting and doing so well allows us to rotate and rest the likes of Liv, Lily, Aimee and Annie and bring them on later in the game, all four came on and impacted the game, Liv scoring two, Annie was relentless up there and kept the defenders on their toes, Lily brought an intensity to the left hand side and put us really on the front foot and Aimee brings quality whenever she steps onto the pitch, bridging the gap between midfield to strikers well, creating chances and looking threatening. I have to give Jess Harris a mention though, to get man of the match in a game where someone else has scored a hat trick shows just how impressive her performance was, defensively she was solid, organised us well, stepping in to intercept well and in possession she was excellent, breaking lines with passes through to centre midfield, looking after the ball well, she put in a really classy performance yesterday.

With the rotations and a slight chance to how we want to play out of possession this season, it wasn’t our most polished performance ever and highlighted a few areas for us to tidy up on but that’s the aim of pre season, see what’s working well and what we need to work on. The most pleasing parts for me, was firstly that the girls applied the work we’ve been doing in training to our match day and then secondly that not at our best we still came away with a more than positive result, we were able to give minutes to players that we wanted to see more of and it’s another big step in the right direction.

Now we focus our attention to Loughborough next weekend, we know just how much of a test that will be for us, they’re a talented side with a great set up and very good coaching staff, it’s the perfect test for us as we hit the business end of preseason.