Ipswich Town Women head coach Joe Sheehan has revealed he has been preparing throughout the Christmas period for the challenge of a Women's FA Cup tie against Women's Super League giants Manchester City at the Joie Stadium on Sunday (FA's YouTube channel, KO 1pm).
Following the cancellation of their FA Women's National League match at home to Exeter City due to the freezing conditions last weekend, the tie will be the club's first match of 2025. While opponents Manchester City were afforded the luxury of jetting off to Abu Dhabi for a week of warm weather training, Sheehan revealed he also asked his players to do some extra sessions over the Christmas period.
"We were due to play Exeter last week,” he said. "Ordinarily we would have had a bit of a break over Christmas but we changed our schedule this time around because we’ve not always started our first league game back in good form, so we brought our players in for some sessions that we hadn't done previously.
"Obviously we were disappointed for the Exeter game because we had trained really well in the lead up to that. We've not been able to benefit from a warm weather training camp but we've spent most of the Christmas period probably trying to get a head of steam on this game."
"I don't think a team like us, at our level, can afford to prepare for Manchester City in one week, it’s going to take a lot longer than that. We spent a lot of our Christmas period - well certainly I did - preparing for this game and then we were able to park it, with probably 80 per cent of the work done, to then prepare for Exeter, then the remaining bit of the preparation we’ve done this week.
"I spent Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day watching some games. Work went on but it’s an enjoyable thing to do because we're not used to having to prepare for a game of this level.”
The unbeaten league leaders of the FA Women’s National League Southern Division, Ipswich Town's priorities lie beyond this weekend’s match to ensure they remain top and secure the automatic promotion spot into the Women's Championship.
Sheehan is hopeful that his players will learn from the experience of taking on a WSL side. "One thing for certain is that we feel whatever the outcome of Sunday, this game will serve us so well because I think we've prepared in a real good fashion for what we have available to us.
"We've not prepared better than we would normally do for a league game because we think this game is more important. It's purely because you have to prepare so much more because there's so much more to identify.
"The complexity of the opposition determines that you really have to make sure that you’ve done everything that you can to be very aware of how good they are. We can take what we’ve done this week and how we’ve prepared and the experience of Sunday, I think will absolutely serve us well.”
Earlier this week, the club announced that Lauren Phillips, the former technical coach with the women’s team at Southampton, would be joining Town as assistant manager. Sheehan hailed her appointment as already having had a "massive” impact.
"Probably it’s a really good time for her to properly join us because we’ve been under a lot of strain really, trying to do what we want to do to, to the best of our capabilities as staff,” he reflected.
Phillips has already worked with striker Ella Rutherford and Eloise King in her previous position as an England youth team coach and crossed paths with captain Maria Boswell during her time at Arsenal.
Sheehan believes Phillips’s experience with Southampton will prove invaluable in matches against high-level opponents like Manchester City.
"This game requires a whole new level of preparation and certainly without her hands-on approach with us and her experience, it would have been a whole lot more difficult,” he said.
"So yes, she’s been a great addition to us and already hit the ground running. She’ll be a really useful person to have alongside us this Sunday and obviously beyond that as well.”
Five years ago, as a fourth-tier side, Town were also drawn away to Manchester City in the Women's FA Cup and suffered a humbling 10-0 defeat. Sheehan hopes that whatever the result on Sunday, his team will react in the right way and ensure they achieve promotion.
"I think despite the scoreline last time we played, we responded really well in our league after that,” he recalled. "The experience of this week and this weekend I think will definitely serve us well for the remainder of our league campaign.”
There is good news on the injury front with Sheehan revealing that after a succession of niggles following her recovery from an anterior cruciate ligament rupture, Rutherford has trained this week and is in contention to play against Manchester City.
"Ella's recent setback was more of a loading thing, an inflammation around her foot more than anything to do with her knee,” Sheehan explained. "She’s had some minor surgery which was really minor, it set her back a week, two weeks. It was nothing severe at all.
"Following on from that, she’s had some soreness in her foot, so there was some inflammation that we just had to allow to settle down really which meant she was going to be out throughout Christmas.
"She’s been really solid this week in training. Certainly I think today and yesterday, we’ve absolutely seen some of the best of her because I feel like she's in a really good space at the moment.
"That's a really good position to be in for us, knowing we've got a player of her level and quality that’s managed to now overcome, hopefully, the last of what’s been a difficult spell with some niggles that’s given her some setbacks.
"Hopefully she’ll be ready for action this weekend and also play an important part for the remainder of the season.”