South Shields Women defender Alliyah Ali has stressed the importance of lifting up spirits after recent setbacks as the lasses push towards a first-promotion into the fourth tier.
The Mariners have had a fortnight to prepare for the Redcar Town Ladies match following their 4-2 defeat against Wakefield and she believes there’s a lot to be learned from the experience which can be taken forward during the next run of games.
Shields are also midway through the NERWFL Premier Division campaign and still have the best goal difference in the league as things stand, even though they’ve played fewer games than those around them.
She said: “We’re half way through the season now and I think we’ve had some good momentum going with an unbeaten run of games.
“Obviously we know what has happened with the last two games and we just have to pick ourselves up from this and go again, we are more than capable of doing that.
“I think the lessons we all learnt from the Wakefield game is that we can’t take our foot off the gas which I feel like we did in the first half. We were too comfortable and got punished for that.
“During the second half of that game we really got together as a team, we were focused on getting the end result that we wanted. Even though we didn’t end up getting the result, we still pushed on in the second half and gave it our all.”
As mentioned the team have had an extra week to get ready for Redcar, and having new arrival Sophie Curle, who comes into the side with a mightily-impressive goal return, on board can only be a positive thing in her view.
She added: “Having this week off really helped us in a sense of ‘we could focus these next four sessions on how Redcar like to play and the way we need to come into this game’. We all put our heads down in training and worked hard and intensity has been really high.
“The lasses have had a good morale within training and with Sophie [Curle] coming in, it has lifted the morale even more.
“We have four big games coming up so we would love to see a big gathering of support from the fans as this would massively help us and it would give the lasses a boost!”
Please note that Sunday’s game - 2pm kick-off - will be played at Ford Hub (SR4 0RW) - supporters will need a QR code to get in but entry is free. Sign up for a Leisure United account to get the code by following the highlighted link.