Match Preview: Cardiff City FC Women vs. Port Talbot Town Ladies
Cardiff City FC Women host Port Talbot Town Ladies at Cardiff International Sports Campus for their fifth fixture of the 2018/19 Welsh Premier Women’s League campaign on Sunday, October 28th – 2pm kick-off.
The match is City's first competitive home encounter of the season and the squad will look to carry their terrific form of three victories from four WPWL away games into the match. The Bluebirds’ most recent fixture was an 11-1 win away to Tredegar Girls AFC in Round One of the FAW Women’s Cup on Sunday, October 14th and the following week’s WPWL match against Cyncoed Ladies was postponed due to international call-ups.
Port Talbot Town currently sit second in the WPWL standings, three points behind first-placed Cardiff Met, who have played one game more. City are just one point behind this weekend’s visitors, making second place achievable come the end of the 90 minutes, as well as having fixtures in hand over Cardiff Met and Swansea City, who sit third in the league table on nine points – level with the Bluebirds.
Cardiff City FC Women manager Joel Hutton spoke prior to the Port Talbot test, discussing the opposition, reflecting on the Bluebirds’ previous match against Tredegar and revealing how the squad reacted to having no match last weekend.
“It’s going to be a completely different test and we know that,” began Joel. “We’re obviously back in league action this week and Port Talbot have started very well, but we’ve started well too and we’re not underestimating them.
“Port Talbot are a good team on their day and I think based on the way that they’ve started the season, it looks like this is the strongest Port Talbot team in years. That’s obviously down to the work that Hayley Williams is doing there with the girls and they seem to have a had a couple of new signings too.
“It was nice to have that victory a couple of weeks ago against Tredegar, but Port Talbot had a similar result at the weekend, playing a team that were a couple of divisions below them. We’ve just got to go into the game fully focused and we know that it’s going to be a tough test.”
Hutton concluded: “Having the game called off last weekend hasn’t affected us at all and if anything, it’s benefited us a bit. We had a couple of girls that were carrying little knocks so it’s been a blessing in disguise from that respect. It would have been nice to play and keep the momentum going, but we’ve had pretty disjointed fixtures this season anyway.
“The girls have reacted well to having a week off and look forward to the games when there is a week in between. They’ve really bought into what we’re doing and just want to get minutes on the pitch. I’m happy with the attitude and application of the girls, so we’ll have a good go at Port Talbot at the weekend.”
Catherine Walsh, who was recently awarded WPWL Player of the Month for September, added: “It’s a really big game for us, our first home match too and we don’t want to drop points at home. They’ve obviously started the season well and we have big respect for them, so we’re going to go into the game like we do any other and make sure that we get the three points from it.”
Catch-Up: Extended highlights of the match will be available to subscribers of Cardiff City TV
Social: Live updates will come via our official Women’s Twitter account, @CardiffCityFCW!
