Pre-season brings penalty delight for Newcastle United Women
Newcastle United Women defeated AC Milan Women 4-3 on penalties at St. James’ Park, having drawn a pre-season match with them, 2-2. In doing so, they won the inaugural Women’s Sela Cup. Daniel Wales reports.
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00:00A sunny Saturday at St James' Park welcomed supporters to the second day of the Sela Weekender,
00:08when Newcastle United Women would face a side with Women's Champions League experience
00:13in AC Milan in a pre-season encounter. Newcastle's new fan zone was certainly ready for an afternoon
00:20of football.
00:22Since being promoted in April, Newcastle have gone up a gear with a host of new signings
00:27to prepare themselves for the step up to the Championship, a division where they will
00:32face North East rivals in Sunderland and Durham. It may only have been pre-season, but for
00:38Newcastle, this was an opportunity to show outsiders that they meant business.
00:44At St James' it was the visitors who came out of the traps with intent, but struggled
00:48to press home the possession. With just under 15 minutes gone, Newcastle flipped the momentum
00:53on its head and took the lead thanks to a curled effort from Alicia Boddy which looped
00:58over the keeper and into the net.
01:01Perhaps this was just what Milan needed, as no sooner had Newcastle finished celebrating,
01:07the visitors were level. Nicola Kovacevska latched onto a square ball to pass home into
01:14an empty goal.
01:15Milan were shifting now and didn't take long to go ahead, this time it was Valentina
01:20Senoia who fired home inside the box.
01:24The second half was more of a non-event, but just as the game seemed to be fading away,
01:29up popped Amy Andrews to calmly slot home, having knocked it around the last defender.
01:35On penalties it was Newcastle who came out on top, a great save from Hannah Hawkins to
01:40deny Milan second spot kick before Evelyn Ije hit the bar with Milan's final attempt,
01:45whereas Newcastle scored all four that they took.
01:50Following the game, Becky Langley spoke on the club's ambitions playing against a side
01:54like AC Milan, what they're hoping for from next season and whether any more incomings
01:59are expected.
02:00I think I emailed some of the staff earlier, Darren Eales will be one of them, saying we've
02:05come from the first game we played here, which was Man Utd v Wimbledon, to now playing the
02:10Champions League against AC Milan, so it's a really exciting time, but we've just got
02:17to keep levelling up every season, and we're doing that with bringing in good players like
02:22Amy and others.
02:23We want to get the right blends because we know how hard it's going to be in FIFA Women's
02:27Championship, and we are the new girls on the block, if that makes sense.
02:31But yeah, as I say, we are full of objectively ambitious, that we will be giving absolutely
02:37everything to achieve three points in each fixture that we come up against, so it will
02:42just be taking it one week at a time, but that's what makes it exciting, because it
02:46will be the heat of the battle every Sunday.
02:48Yeah, I'm quite happy with the kind of score we've got at the moment, there's probably
02:51one or two who will come in, so there's a few lots of more ambitions to bring in.