QPR Ladies Reserves 0:0 (aet) Oxford City 3rds
The QPR Ladies Reserves side capped a memorable day by winning the Thames Valley Counties Women’s Football League Plate thanks to a 3-2 win on penalties after drawing 0-0 after extra time.
The win saw Captain Melanie Randall lift the Reserves first ever piece of silveware!
It’s kinda funny. I’m not really one to suffer from nerves, but as I hopped on the train on my way to Loftus Road I got a small case of the butterflies as I listened to some music, which surprised me. I chose Second Toughest In The Infants, if you’re interested. Anyway I bumped into a few of the players on the way when I changed at Tottenham Court Road station and with some of them being just 16 and 17 years old, I realised they’re just babies when it comes to football at this level and to play in a final at these ages is an amazing achievement.
Yet, to listen to them chatter and the banter they threw at one another on this journey, or talk about what they’d been up to the night before or how excited they were about which party they were attending next week, you’d be forgiven if you thought that they weren’t playing in the biggest match of their footballing careers to date. There were no nerves in sight and it was just business as usual for them.
So, as soon as I was in their company it allowed me to relax and they would never have realised how compelling an impact their presence had on me. This was just another walk in the park for them and it put me at ease for the rest of the day and that’s the beauty of youth. And it was our youth that won us this final.
This was pretty much the perfect game for our team. I thought the semi-final was going to be a good enough experience for our lot in terms of their development for the future, so reaching the final was a real bonus and win or lose, it just gave us that something extra to build on and prepare for next season and beyond.
But once you’re in the final you want to win. And here, we did so in a manner that was more than perfect. We haven’t had a 0-0 all season, so to do that here and over 120 minutes is somewhat ironic, especially as ourselves and Oxford are the highest scorers in our division with over 50 goals each.
But to have to endure and go through a penalty shoot-out and come out on top is really the type of experience that develops players and takes them to another level. It gives you the mental strength and character to believe and the understanding of what it takes to achieve. It’s the taste of success.
We are fortunate with the way everything has panned out this season and I’m really excited at how the players will respond to the experiences they’ve gone through because we needed them. The majority of our lot have never played in a semi-final or a final before, or haven’t experienced extra-time let alone a penalty shoot-out. Some probably hadn’t even experienced a 0-0 either, or a full season of 11-a-side football, they’re that young.
The match was played out in a typical cup final manner. There was not a lot of pretty football on show but there was a lot of heart and battle from both sides. It was all about winning individual duals and making the most of dead-ball situations by winning the first or second balls.
I thought we did better throughout the 90 on all those accounts, but it was a close call and although we had two or three golden moments that we didn’t take, Oxford almost won the game with a header that bounced back off the post late on with our keeper Jess Devoti beaten. It somehow stayed out and I thought it was in all the way and had they scored that, it may well have been their day.
But our team have just got an insatiable amount of energy and they were relentless. As the match wore on our youth and legs were key and we had a great bench to call upon too to help us out and they all played massive parts in the game.
In contrast, the experienced Oxford side began to tire and the 30 minutes of extra-time tipped the balance of the game truly in our favour and perhaps we should have won it in that period. Only Carol Harwood, the ex-Arsenal and England international saved them with an immense display at the back including one absolutely stunning last ditch sliding tackle to deny Sylvia Williams a winning goal. Anita Afonso also went close and had a couple of shots blocked at point blank range off the line as we peppered and tried to breach their goal.
I must say though, Carol is a real credit to the game. She has been marvellous against us in the matches we’ve come up against Oxford but players like her are what football needs. She’s playing at a much lower level now and purely for the enjoyment and love of the game. But she probably doesn’t realise just how beneficial her presence is, not only to her own team, but to the opposition players too, particularly the younger players of today. It’s crucial to the development of women’s football and is equally crucial in the men’s game too.
Our lot will have learned an awful lot from just being on the pitch around her and it’s a great experience for them to come up against somebody of her quality and class. We actually spoke about her before the match and tried our best to nullify her from the back by asking Chloe Julien to keep buzzing around her whenever we lost possession or if she had the ball.
We worked hard today though and we never really looked like conceding. The defence were solid and have been for a few games now and that gave us a good foundation to try and take the game to Oxford. But we played with positivity and always tried to create chances and that’s why I felt we deserved to win.
At the end of extra-time I looked at the players and smelt that they were going to finish the job and claim what they so badly wanted. We didn’t practice penalties nor did we even talk about the possibility of who would be taking them beforehand.
You could argue that it’s a novice mistake, or that we were naive to believe that the game wouldn’t be settled in 90 minutes or extra-time…or you could say it was the lucky use of reverse psychology and not putting pressure or thoughts into the minds of our players and letting them deal with it if it came. It was probably a little bit of all three of those things if we’re honest.
But we had confidence and despite only two of them chirping up and wanting to take one we looked them in the eyes and told them not to worry and that we’d be alright. In Jess Devoti, we felt we had an excellent goalkeeper who had a great chance to make saves and within seconds we had six, seven or eight all wanting to have a go from the spot.
And so Jess started the shoot-out by saving Carol Harwood’s opening penalty, who didn’t deserve to miss. Although we missed our next penalty they then missed their second and then Jess stepped up herself to show everybody how it should be done by giving us a 1-0 lead. They scored to make it 1-1 and then we missed, and then they scored again. Danielle Clare Richards then took an age with her penalty but slotted it home with aplomb and they went and missed again leaving Scarlett Hanrahan to stroll up and place her penalty coolly in for 3-2 and handing us the win.
The rest they say is history and my first ever Rangers final, which I’ve waited 26 years for ended with a win…and as Scarlett ran back towards the centre circle with a stream of players sprinting towards her I almost blubbed, but don’t worry cos I held firm, just enough to snap hers and our moment of glory.
On a closing note I will repeat what I told the players before the match. In my eyes this final should be used as a springboard and a stepping stone to bigger and better things in the future. It should be the start of developing a winning mentality and fuel our hunger and desire to want days like these each and every season.
It takes a lot of hard work and effort to achieve consistently but now we know what it takes and what if feels like. We really ought to go only one way from here and that’s upwards, so let’s make sure we do.
We can enjoy this moment right now but I don’t want us to rest on our laurels because there is plenty more to come from this team and success is about consistently performing, consistently delivering, consistenly doing the business and always wanting to better and improve and I will be relentless in my bid to achieve that.
Come on You Rs!
Team: Jess Devoti, Melanie Randall (Danielle Clare Richards), Nkechi Chukwueke, Amber Luzar, Vicky James, Jade Bowley (Alex Lupano), Kesleigh Danielle Long (Slyvia Williams), Scarlett Hanrahan, Anita Afonso, Chloe Julien (Kylie Worster), Allana Ashmeil (Natalie Worster)
Subs: Danielle Clare Richards, Alex Lupano, Sylvia Williams, Kylie Worster, Natalie Worster
