Clinical Durham take the win

By Chris Routledge

Bradford City Women headed north this week to play Durham Cestria, a team they

played and beat earlier on in the season at Eccleshill. Both teams have made

signings since the early stages of the season and with Durham doing well in the

league that game would not be a reflection of what was to come.

The game kicked off in bright sunshine which was very welcome after leaving the

rain in Bradford behind and for the first 15 minutes City were doing well. However

this was about as good as it got for City, Durham scored with a breakaway goal, after

a City defender couldn’t quite get to a speculative through ball and the Durham

forward finished well under pressure from a covering defender. Durham went on to a

4-0 lead at half time, a combination of bad defending and a very unfortunate own

goal giving them a match winning advantage.

Half Time - Durham Cestria 4-0 Bradford City Women

The second half started badly for City who conceded the fifth within five minutes of

the restart, a fortunate deflection putting the Durham striker through to finish well.

Manager Chris Hames did alter things around bringing on the only two substitutes

that City took with them and whilst this did put some more energy into the City team

Durham went on to score twice more.

Full Time - Durham Cestria 7-0 Bradford City Women

To sum things up, there was not much to take from this game for the players, the

defeat was mostly down to clinical Durham finishing, bad luck and hesitation in

defence. Manager Chris Hames will have learnt a lot though and will have a chance

to try get some more players into the squad over the next couple of weeks and work

on tactics before next weekend’s County Cup quarter final tie.

Finally some good news for Bradford City Women’s young reserves, most of the

players are in their teens and for some the first season in open age football. They

had a tremendous 3-2 win in a friendly game over Stockport County reserves thanks

to a brace from Amelia White and one from Ellie Mawson. Well done to this team

who normally play in a strong reserves league containing the likes of Huddersfield

Town reserves and Blackburn reserves.

Next up on January 19th the first team host Brayton Belles in the West Riding

County Cup quarter final, while the Reserves are at home to Huddersfield Town in

the league.