Lucy Egan’s brilliant second-half strike saw Ipswich Town Women to a 1-0 victory over Hashtag United in their opening FAWNL Division One South East fixture of the season at the Goldstar Ground, Felixstowe this afternoon.
Egan volleyed into the top corner in the 53rd minute to get the Tractor Girls’ 2020/21 campaign off to a winning start.
"A great win for us,” manager Joe Sheehan said afterwards. "I think the first game of a season is always difficult because you don’t really know what to expect, everyone’s starting with a clean slate.
"I said earlier in the week that they’d recruited pretty well and had got good backing, so we thought it would be a challenging game for us and they did make it difficult for us at times.
"But we managed to find our rhythm and control the game as we know we’re capable of doing and we came up with a really, really good goal in the second half to get the three points.”
Goalscorer Egan wasn’t even down to play this morning but came into the reckoning after a number of the six players returning having been on international duty with young England squads during the week were unable to play due to injury.
"She’s played in midfield today [rather than her usual role in defence] and at 11 o’clock this morning she wasn’t even starting.
"We’ve had to bring her in in the warm-up and we trust her wholeheartedly to play and do a job wherever she’s required and she scored an absolute belter.
"We had lots of control, we tried to ramp it up in the second half and managed to get the goal that was needed.”
Regarding defender Lindsey Cooper, who was making her 200th appearance for Town, Sheehan added: "She’s come back in magnificent condition and has been at the club a long while.
"A proud moment for her to come and be part of what we’re doing and to play her 200th game today is a testament to how good she’s been and how valuable she is to us.”
The Tractor Girls are next in action on Sunday when they face Billericay Town, who won 4-0 at Cambridge City this afternoon, at New Lodge (KO 2pm).
Town: Runnacles, Hubbard (c) (Bryant 54), Cooper, Egan, Thomas (Biggs 80), Rossiter, Sutherland, Peskett, Lafayette, Peake, Barratt (Wakefield 75). Unused: Williamson, King. Att: 221.