What a match
At the start of the day, The New Saints Women needed to defeat Abergavenny by four clear goals to make the Genero Adran Premier Championship Conference.
Greg Draper’s team were not short on chances in the first 45 and managed to find two goals through the opportunities had, with Lucie Platt and Helen Evans being the players to get the ball over the line in the opening half.
Attempts on goal suddenly dried up in the second-half. It was not until the 72nd minute when the third came through an Izzy Redding header that kept everyone on the edge of their seats for the remainder of the match.
The 88th minute of this encounter will forever be remembered in the history of The New Saints. Helen Evans played a pass that found Emily Ridge and The New Saints’ top scorer shot from the edge of the 18-yard area with the effort going in off the post.
The target at the start of the day was achieved with the 4-0 win.
https://twitter.com/AdranLeagues/status/1622633195572174851?s=20&t=xt8ZKRQhGFgRflIowD55kg
Moments like what we saw yesterday is why we love football and keep on watching the beautiful game.
https://twitter.com/sgorio/status/1622668022287671300?s=20&t=xt8ZKRQhGFgRflIowD55kg
Caitlin Chapman
A player that has done incredibly well in phase one is Caitlin Chapman.
The Northern Ireland player has racked up nine assists in the phase of the Adran Premier which puts Chapman only behind Ffion Price of Cardiff City, who has eleven.
It was the two assists that Chapman supplied to Evans and Redding yesterday that helped prove the difference to get The Saints to the four goal mark that was needed.
Emily Ridge
You could use a lot of superlatives to sum up Emily Ridge, but the one that stands out is legend.
Ridge has been on first-class form and most importantly delivering in the big moments, with the 30-year-old’s hat-trick in her first match of the Adran Premier 22/23 season away at Barry Town United (November 6, 2022) springing to mind.
Ridge has now averaged a goal every 76 minutes and thirty seconds in the league this season from the eight goals netted in seven appearances.
https://twitter.com/sgorio/status/1622268921121312768?s=20&t=xt8ZKRQhGFgRflIowD55kg
A clean sheet
As Greg Draper pointed out at the end of his post-match interview, the defence did well to keep a clean sheet against Abergavenny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvwMw5buRZU
Credit has to go to Sarah Parkes, Evie Williams, Tia Lockley, Izzy Redding and skipper Beth Lewis for doing an excellent job at the back.
If a goal would have been conceded, it could have made the target of winning by a margin of four a step potentially too far.
It is a sixth clean sheet for The Saints in all competitions this season.
The fantastic backroom staff
A lot work behind the scenes often go unnoticed, but Greg Draper, James Steer and Nicola Deane have done a terrific job to get the players to the position of where they are now in the Championship Conference.
Kudos also has to go to Andy Williams and Sarah Lowden for their work in the recent past.
It has been incredible to see how for far this team has come over the past 18 months and the future looks very exciting.
Lead image by Brian Jones
