Ipswich Town Women’s manager Joe Sheehan is looking forward to his side’s return to Portman Road on Sunday afternoon when they take on Plymouth Argyle, having fond memories of last season’s match, the 5-0 victory over Chatham Town in their first ever league game at the stadium.

A year ago, 10,173 fans watched the match with the Blues all but out of the running for promotion at that stage.

An even bigger attendance, perhaps as high as 15,000, is expected this time around with 8,000 tickets having already been sold for the 2pm kick-off with Town having a great opportunity of winning promotion to the Women’s Championship - the second tier - for the first time. Tickets are available here.

Sheehan’s side go into Sunday’s match second in the FAWNL Southern Premier Division, three points behind leaders Hashtag United but with the Blues having two games in hand on the Essex side.

“It’s a good occasion to look forward to,” Sheehan said. “It was this weekend last year where we made our Portman Road debut in a league fixture.

“It seems to have come round really quick. Personally, I haven’t spent too much time thinking about this game or this occasion over the last few weeks with our priorities lying elsewhere, but now we’re in the game week, it’s something that we can certainly look forward to this weekend.”

Reflecting on last year, Sheehan, who has been in charge since February 2019, recalled: “We were in a different position in the league and we felt it was an opportunity that we had to make an impact on the community, really. Those are my memories from last time.

“An incredible attendance, the coach arrival, seeing so many supporters, it seemed like a typical men’s matchday, albeit on a little bit of a smaller scale. Everything was operating exactly the same.

“Our focus was to be trailblazers, to inspire the community and to see so many fans come and watch us and try and put on a performance that will leaving a lasting memory with everyone.

“That was something that I remember, it was something we focused on and I think it was a huge success.”

Sheehan believes that in the year since it has had the hoped-for impact: “I think it has. We’ve got some incredibly bright players in our pathway and I think what we have coming up seems to be really exciting as well. There’s definitely some bright talent that I’ve seen this season.

“Our attendances have grown at Felixstowe again, which is great, and we’ve always been really well backed there and there always seem to be new fans there, boys, girls, parents, pets!

“The club has been on an upward trajectory in recent years and I certainly feel like we’ve seen a lot of growth with the women’s side of things this last year off the back of that.”

The visit by second-bottom Plymouth, who the Blues defeated 5-1 at Home Park earlier in the season, is the first of five fixtures which will dictate whether the women will add to the men’s back-to-back promotions.

Sheeran, who was asked whether he believes his team needs to win all those games, says, like his counterpart with the men’s team, Kieran McKenna, that he’s not looking at the wider picture.

“We have a significant goal difference advantage, which potentially means we don’t have to win them all, but we completely detach ourselves from thinking about that,” he insisted.

“I’m fully aware that we’ll probably have supporters, players, staff where there might be a moment during their day when they think about that and as humans there will be an element of doubt or negativity at times, but it doesn’t cloud my judgement or thinking, it doesn’t consume me daily.

“That’s me being really honest. It doesn’t consume my thinking daily about what we need to do or how many points or who have they got to play, it literally is today. It’s all about today.”

Recalling last year’s match and what he learnt from it, he said: “It was a convincing win in the end. It was an electric start, I remember the kick-off, we won the ball back really quickly, Sophie [Peskett] was dribbling down the right and the roar of the crowd was something that really stuck with me. I think we won a corner in the first minute or two and that stuck with me.

“Certainly having a really bright start will get the crowd up and I think that’s something we will look to try and do early. Really start on the front foot, get the crowd with us really early and hopefully we can capitalise on that.

“In some ways it was a flawless performance. We won convincingly, I know we missed a penalty in that game [Bonnie Horwood’s kick was saved] but it was a convincing victory. It was a nice game for us to start with at the stadium with the crowd.

“Some really good experiences, we’ve learnt from that game, but a good performance, we won the game 5-0 in the end, so we can’t have too many complaints.”

Many fans at Sunday’s game will be watching his side for the first time and Sheehan was asked what they can expect.

“Hopefully a team which will put everything into the game first and foremost, and that’s something we lay down every matchday, we want to give the game everything we’ve got, want to put our best foot forward.

“We want to make sure we work as hard as we possibly can and then implement the key things that we try and work on to try and attack the game and put in a positive performance.

“Sometimes that can change on who we’re playing and the type of pitch we’re playing on because we don’t always play on pitches like we’ll get to play on this Sunday and sometimes that can influence how you look to play.

“We take each game as it comes. Of course, we try and entertain and try and have an element of control in the game where we can take it on an impose ourselves and take the initiative on it.

“That’s not always achievable and we’re fully aware that sometimes momentum shifts in games and we have to play a little bit different.

“Hopefully they’ll watch a team that is incredibly brave, is incredibly hard-working, that works really hard for each other, that will try and take control of the game and take advantage of the spaces that might be available to us and add really good quality and speed in the higher ends of the pitch to try and create opportunities to score.

“And we do get that right, we really smell danger and we often get one or two and we can really kick on then.

“We get a good bit of momentum behind us and we like to really attack the game and keep the flow of it.

“Hopefully this weekend, if there are opportunities available to us to do that, then we’d like to take them.

“But I think this is where we’ve evolved a little bit from last year. Where we wouldn’t have adapted too much two or three years ago, now we’re happy changing our game and competing in a different way, and we really embrace that. We feel that’s helped us get results that perhaps we wouldn’t have got previously.”

Photo: TWTD

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