Plymouth Argyle (A) Matchday Blog
On Sunday Pompey made the trip to Home Park to take on Plymouth Argyle in the league. This will be Pompey's furthest away day in the league this season.
Last season was a brilliant one for Plymouth under manager Marie Hourihan, they finished 2nd in the league and reached the FAWNL Cup Final. They missed out on promotion after losing to Wolves in the play-off final.
Hourihan then quit to "pursue other opportunities", the realty was the board were slashing the women's teams budget, making further progression of the women's team impossible. The whole squad was released from their contracts and they were forced to rebuild from scratch under new manager Matt Green. They started the season with a new squad that has an average age of just 19.
Three of their departing squad ended up at Portsmouth. Katie Wilson, Arabella Suttie and Hermione Cull.
Despite the destructive cost cutting they still play their home games at the clubs stadium Home Park, a strange one. But perhaps it's cheaper than hiring another local stadium?
Unsurprisingly they have started the season poorly with 1 win and 5 losses in all competitions. Pompey travelled to Home Park looking for their 4th straight win after the last minute opening day defeat to Fulham.
Pompey have a decent record against Plymouth over the last decade. Playing them 10 times with 7 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses and were undefeated in 5 against them going into the match. We had played Plymouth at Home Park before, 7 years ago where goals from Katie James and Jade Widdows secured us a point. We Vlogged that day for Pompey Women Vlogs. You can watch that Vlog here.
We parked up in the surprisingly free car park next to the stadium and made our way to the ticket office. I have been avoiding buying tickets online recently as every club wants you to make a ticket account with them so they can permanently spam you with sales emails. I think I have ticket accounts for about 20 different clubs now.
However purchasing tickets in person meant an extra £1.50 per person charge and they took my name and number anyway! Football needs to do better.
Due to some questionably vague directions given by the ticket office we eventually found our way into the single open stand for women's games, the clubs new Mayflower stand. Credit to Plymouth here. This stand is very good. Unrestricted site lines, padded seats, food area and a fantastic bar. This is about as good as it gets from a fan perspective.
Staff inside the ground were very welcoming and friendly, we were allowed to go behind the goal to put our flags up and we met up with fellow Pompey fans to make an "away end" around the half way line. The fan picture taken by the club media is a great one, I believe there is a combined Pompey Women match attendance record of around 1200 games between the 9 of us here. A few miles chalked up that's for sure.
The sun was shining and the teams came out to a warm reception. On paper Pompey were favourites but there was a bit of nervousness. Plymouths manager had said in his pre-match interview they would set up to frustrate Pompey. A strong start and first half goals were going to be crucial.
Straight from the off Pompey were on the attack. We have been fortunate over the years to see some very strong Pompey Women sides, and I have seen games like this many times over the years. The way to win is always the same, quick balls forward, keep your wide players as wide as possible and defend counter attacks and set pieces well when needed.
It was one way traffic straight from kick off but took until the 31st minute for Pompey to find the breakthrough is a unexpected way.
After a Pompey attack the ball fell to Suttie who shot from 30yards out, it took a huge deflection off a Plymouth player and flew over the keeper to give Pompey the lead.
It was perhaps a fortunate goal but unquestionably Pompey deserved their lead.
Just two mins later Pompey extended their lead when Beattie fired home from just inside the box with a very tidy finish. Half time came and Pompey looked very comfortable and were worthy of their two goal lead.
In the second half Plymouth got deeper and deeper, as you can see in the picture below they sat 11 players behind the ball whilst staying as deep as possible to limit space behind their defence. You couldn't really blame them but it lead to quite a frustrating watch. The likes of Mallon who has been brilliant this season had no room to operate in and Pompey were finding it difficult to get meaningful attempts on goal.
Eventually Pompey scored their 3rd when Barrett fired home after a superb Beattie through ball. Then in added time Barrett fire home her second with a wonderful finish after a long ball forward. Barrett and Beattie are really starting to gel as a forward line for Pompey, both were excellent today and took their goals well. I'm really looking forward to watching these two over the coming season. Barrett can get you a goal from anywhere and Beattie looks like an "old school" style centre forward.
The full time whistle went and it's four wins on the bounce for this new Pompey squad. Each game you can see the team getting better. I don't believe we have been tested much as a defensive unit yet, that will come in the next two months.
A huge shout out to the Pompey fans who travelled down to the game. We got a couple of pictures with Kerry Beattie, Freya Jones, Ava Rowbotham and Jazz Bull before we headed home. Next up for Pompey is Real Bedford in the league on Sunday 20th September.
