Ipswich Town Women travel to face AFC Wimbledon at Plough Lane this afternoon, aiming to keep the pressure on FAWNL Southern Premier Division leaders Hashtag United (KO 2pm).

The Essex side inflicted the Blues’ first league defeat last weekend, narrowly winning 1-0 at Canvey Island, to open a gap of six points at the top of the table but with Town having three games in hand.

While the Blues are in action against the Dons, who are seventh, the Tags are at home to ninth-placed Cheltenham with both promotion-chasing sides expected to claim all three points.

“Obviously a disappointing loss, but I think it’s galvanised us,” manager Joe Sheehan said regarding the defeat to Hashtag.

“We came back in Tuesday, obviously disappointed but we were prepared then to move on to the next game and prepare really well for that.

“We have been galvanised. To go this far into the season without getting beat is still a pretty good achievement but there’s still a lot of football to be played and we’re really geared up to go again on Sunday.”

Reflecting on Wimbledon, who Town thrashed 5-0 at the Martello Ground in Felixstowe at the start of December, he added: “A team that came up last season, have had a mixed bag of results. They’ve taken points and have performed really well against some really good teams in this division and I’m sure they’ll have been disappointed not to pick up points from some of their games as well.

“It’s a tough game and everyone will be trying to finish the season really strongly and we’ll go there to their stadium and try and perform the best that we can.”

Like his counterpart with the men’s team, Kieran McKenna, Sheehan says he’s concentrating on individual matches rather than the overall picture and the push for promotion to the Women’s Championship for the first time.

“We’ve said this a lot, certainly most recently, we’ve completely detached ourselves from the outcome of this season and are just focusing really heavily on each game as it comes,” he said.

“That’s all we can do at this stage, win, lose or draw. The approach has been really consistent and hopefully with that we’ll keep trying to do the right things and good things will happen throughout the games and we’ll perform really well and will try and win as many games as possible.”

Photo: Matchday Images

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