Weston St. Johns 0:3 QPR Ladies
The QPR Ladies deservedly recorded their 10th league win of the season away to Weston St. Johns in what was our first competitive game in eight weeks due to the weather.
That’s a long, long time and you wonder how such a lengthy gap can affect your players and your team, but we found out that there’s plenty of fight in our lot and that they’re up for this challenge.
The pitch was in a pretty dire state and was easily the worst we’ve encountered this season. It was extremely boggy in some places and extremely sticky in others, but all successful teams need the right balance and despite the circumstances, we showed another side of our game and proved we can adapt and dig out results when needed.
Weston St. Johns were by all means very physical in their approach, but our players gave them no short change in return. Despite the number of times we’ve played pretty football this season, we just rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in when it mattered. But we also showed a quality and intelligence to get it down and play at the right times too, which gave us great control over the match from start to finish.
I thought we mixed this aspect of our play up really well and they understood what they needed to do to get the result we wanted. I also admired the way we went about the job in terms of not taking the opposition lightly despite both teams being at opposite ends of the table. We showed the necessary commitment, respect and focus to come here and get the job done and we went away very satisfied with the result and the performance.
We were smart enough not to get dragged into a physical war, despite some niggly challenges and skirmishes and we were never deterred by decisions that didn’t seem to go our way either. It’s important that top sides show they can’t be bullied and if we can maintain this approach and concentration in all of our matches between now and the end of the season, and continue to believe that we will produce through our quality and desire regardless, then we will be okay.
Cherrelle Albert opened the scoring in the first-half from a well worked move down the left after Susannah Abbott found her with an excellent cross. Susannah then scored from a free-kick to make it 2:0 by half-time and Mel Bidewell added a third with a header from a well taken corner in the second to put the game beyond doubt.
We perhaps could have scored more, having a goal harshly disallowed and two clear penalty appeals waved away as well as hitting the bar, but we got what we came for which was three excellent points.
There’s a little bit of everything in this side from graft, desire and finesse and now we’re rolling again I can only see us improving further. We were always in control here and in many ways, we hope and intend to always be in control of our destiny this season too.
Team: Jess Devoti, Ceryl Guard, Nikki Crump (Hannah Curnow), Simone Dwyer, Mel Bidewell, Amy Murphy (Carla Williams), Susannah Abbott, Tammy Scrivens, Suze Wylie (Camilla Ray), Cherelle Albert & Seun Odeniyi
Goals: Albert, Abbott, Bidewell
