South Shields Women host Spennymoor Town Ladies at Harton Welfare, in what will be the first game of the new season, this Sunday (2pm kick-off).
Pre-season couldn’t have gone much better for The Mariners, who won all four friendlies and scored a mightily impressive 21 goals, keeping three clean sheets in the process.
The advent of a new season brings about the typical excitement and nerves that come with it, but the players are well up for the challenge of making progress in all areas this year.
The Moors have appointed ex-Mariner Gav Cogdon as interim manager this week to help oversee preparations leading up to Sunday, so the visitors may be something of an unknown.
Nevertheless, Shields can look to last season’s 3-1 victory at home against Spennymoor for motivation - a brace by Sophie Curle and a headed effort by Jaz Elliott-Wood gave The Mariners all three points that day.
Alex’s thoughts
Head coach Alex Miller has looked back to the aforementioned fixture in April, to help spur the team on this weekend.
She said: “We always talk about that game (when we played Spenny at home towards the end of the season) and we look back at it as one of our most ‘together’ team performances.
“We really enjoyed it, both as coaches and players. It was just something where it just gelled and stuck together, and everyone did everything that they wanted to and everything went to plan.
“So definitely hoping for something along those lines again, hopefully improving on the last time out as well, but we’ll see what Sunday brings!”
Information for supporters
Kick-off at Harton Welfare (NE34 0NA) is at 2pm this Sunday, September 1st.
Entry is free and the bar will be open during the afternoon for refreshments.
Given it is the first game of the league season we would love to see as many supporters there as possible to help give the lasses the best possible start to the campaign!
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