- Bradford City
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.