ICYMI: Liverpool Women’s Round Up Edition

Last week was fairly busy for Liverpool Women, naturally on a week when this writer had traded days for match coverage. Thankfully, that means there’s quite a lot to cover when it comes to the Women’s side of Merseyside - and while this writer normally tries to devote a separate piece to them whenever the chance arises, a lot of the stuff is no longer super timely so here we are.

Liverpool Women’s are in the thick of the group stages for the Continental Tyres Cup and while their December 5th match, a Merseyside Derby rematch, was postponed to December 16th (yes good planning, putting it on the same day as the Northwest Derby for the Men’s teams) it did nothing to help the eventual result. Everton were able to beat Liverpool 3-1, with goals from Chantelle Boye-Hlorkah, Simone Magill, and Elise Hughes keeping them well ahead. Niamh Fahey provided the only goal for the Reds on the day to try and drag the women back into the match but it wouldn’t be enough.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Red Women though, as they notched a win against Reading earlier in the week! Liverpool went for a rematch, only this time also in the Cup, and with Fara Williams once again doing her level best to defeat us, it ended one all at the end of 90 minutes. The match then went to a penalty shoot out and miraculously, Liverpool came out with a 5-4 win after Sophie Bradley-Auckland netted the final shot.

Speaking after the match, Bradley-Auckland said: “We’ve had a tough first half of the season.

”We’ve got a great group of girls and all we want to do is play well for each other and I think you can see that out on the pitch, we never ever give up and you’ve seen that.

”As soon as it went to penalties I was like, ‘we’ve got this!’ Fran Kitching, our goalkeeper, had a great game, made some fantastic saves and as soon as we went to penalties I knew she was going to save at least one for us.”

Unfortunately that confidence didn’t carry them through to the match against Everton, and Liverpool currently sit bottom of their group with only two wins and did not qualify for the next stage. Talk about a rough first half of the season.

The Women did get to take part in an annual club tradition this year as well, by making their own trip to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital on Friday to bring gifts and meet with patients. Manager Vicky Jepson said of the trip: “It’s fantastic for myself, the players and the staff to visit the children at Alder Hey.

“We always enjoy spending time in the local community, especially when it involves putting smiles on children’s faces at Christmas time.

“The work the staff do year-round at Alder Hey is incredible. All our players thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with the children and hearing how brave and inspirational they are with the challenges some of them face on a daily basis.”

A hectic and mixed bag of results for the end of the year for Liverpool Women but with a break until January on the books, a rest will hopefully do them some good and they’ll be able to find winning ways in the new year.