It’s hard to look ahead to this weekend’s Cork City Fc Women’s underage fixtures without first reflecting on a remarkable week for the girls in green. Two magnificent away wins for the Wu17s and WU19s against Carlow-Kilkenny and Bohemian FC respectively. We caught up with Jess Lawton for a look at a whirlwind seven days.
“It was a tough game, showing how teams are progressing” says Lawton discussing the WU17s 3-0 win in Kilkenny, the goals coming from Grace Flanagan and Kayleigh Still “the played good football, defended very well and they frustrated us, but we stuck to the game plan and did break them down eventually. You can’t take any points for granted in this league, so we were delighted with the win”
Six of Lawton’s U17 squad featured in international squads with Clodagh Fitzgerald, Kiera Sena and Shauna Sheahan lifting both the John Read Trophy & Bob Docherty Cup with the FAI schools U15 squad in England. On Monday Grace Flanagan, Fiana Bradley and Heidi Mackin headed to Malta with the Irish U16s, opening their camp with a 4-0 win over Turkey, Heidi grabbing the third.
Only Clodagh Fitzgerald is confirmed among from the six internationals, but Lawton isn’t worried ahead of the trip to DLR Waves “they have a few players away on international duty too, but we know we have a fantastic squad, we have faith in each and every player and we’ll put up a fight, play our game and hopefully continue the run we’re on”.
A player returning from international duty grabbed the winner for the WU19 away to Bohemian FC last Sunday, Chloe Atkinson marking her return to the squad with a quality free kick, a result Lawton felt her team deserved “We had Chloe back and Ellie O’Brien back from injury which was a great boost. We’d spoken about how we were glad about the performances, but not the result, we had things to work on and going to Dublin the girls stuck to their task and were brilliant. We started fast, retained the ball well, kept control” says Lawton, reflecting that it could have ended differently “We’d used all our subs so played the last ten minutes or so with 10 players and to be fair, Bohs pressed well, and we were a little like Ireland away to Sweden during the week. They piled on the pressure, but we were professional and saw it out.
The win was welcome ahead of the tough task against Peamount United on Sunday, but Lawton is unfazed “There are no easy games” she says “but there shouldn’t be, there are Elite players, and these challenges are key to their development towards the senior squad. We’ve played Peamount earlier in the season, we know them well, their strengths. We played well against them in that game, just couldn’t take our chances. We want to put that right
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