Peterborough United Women full of confidence ahead of historic FA Cup tie

It will be a special occasion when Chloe Brown’s side step out on to the pitch on Sunday to face Long Eaton United as it will be the first time in the club’s history that they will be playing in the Women’s FA Cup first round.

It is even more poignant given the fact they have achieved the feat in their first year since being brought fully under the Peterborough United banner.

They did it in style too, courtesy of an emphatic 10-2 victory away at seventh tier Dronfield Town. Goals from Niamh Connor, Hannah Pendred, Cassie Steward, two from Megan Parrett and four from star striker Kier Perkins sealed the deal for Posh, who play in the Women’s National League Division One Midlands, the fourth tier.

Posh are two ties away from potentially meeting an FA Women’s Championship side and three from meeting a Super League side but must first negotiate their way past divisional rivals Long Eaton. Revenge will be on the players’ minds given the fact Long Eaton knocked them out of the National League Cup with a 4-1 win in September. The sides also played out a 2-2 draw in their league encounter just seven days prior and Long Eaton sit in fourth in the standings, ahead of Posh, who are 10th out of 13 teams.

Brown is confident that her side has taken in the lessons from these previous encounters and have what it takes to come out on top this time around. She said: ““We are going into this game full of confidence and having learnt from the mistakes we have made against them in the past. I’m really proud to have got to this stage in the first year after coming under the Peterborough United banner. It wasn’t even a close game either; we went and scored 10 goals. It was a very, very convincing route into the first round, which was even more pleasing.

“I think it will be good, the players are keen to prove a point. We got knocked out in the League Cup to these guys and they want to prove it was a fluke and that we can go there and win the game. We are confident, looking forward to it, it will be great to play in the first round and even better if we can get through to the second.

“We want to focus on Long Eaton first and really concentrate on them, but we’d love to go on and play against teams we don’t get a chance to play against. We’ve already played them twice this season, so it’s nice in a way to know the team but it’s also nice in the FA Cup to go out and play against teams you wouldn’t normally play against and when the bigger teams come in, we’d love to be still in the cup so we can face some of them and challenge ourselves to see where we’re at. Long term we want to be picking out some bigger teams, but we’ve got to get there first.”

Posh’s preparation for the match has been somewhat hampered, however, by the fact they will be coming into it off the back of a two-week break. A natural break in the fixture list turned into two weeks off after bad weather caused the league match at Leafield Athletic, at the end of October, to be postponed.

Chloe added: “It’s been nice to have a bit of a break. It’s come at a good time but maybe been a bit long. I think a one-week break would have been better for us than a two week break. One week would have just given us a bit of breathing space, having two weeks gives us players itching to get back on the pitch and can take a bit of momentum out of you.

“We’ve been structuring our training sessions to make sure they are game-realistic and we had four players who went off and played for either our reserves or our foundation team at the weekend so they can get some minutes over our belt. Where we haven’t had games, we’ve had extra training time to really nail down the areas we want to focus on.”

The match will take place at Long Eaton’s Grange Park ground at 1pm on Sunday.

Posh will be joined in the first round by Netherton United Ladies, who are also playing in the first round proper of the competition for the first time ever. They host fellow Knowle Ladies in what will be a great way to celebrate Women’s Football Weekend in the city. Netherton play in the 7th tier and are one of only five sides from that level remaining in the competition.