Town One Step Closer To Playing At Wembley
“This is the first tournament I’ve been involved with in a helping out sense,” said Beth.“It’s just so good to see more and more young girls playing football.
“Tournaments like this get more girls into football and shows how popular the sport is going.
“We were there to support the girls playing football and to have a chat with them. It was a really good day.”
Beth Francis, 19, who represents Shrewsbury Town’s Ladies team, was also on hand with several other teammates to offer support and advice to all the budding young football stars.
“It went fantastically well,” said Nicole.
“Plenty of girls playing football is always a positive and it’s fantastic to see our community schemes are going out there and encouraging more and more girls to be playing.
“The prize of Wembley is such an incentive. Most professional footballers won’t make it to Wembley in their career so for the girls to get there is incredible.”
Representing the Female Football Development programme was Nicol Meredith, who was extremely pleased with how the competition went.
“I’m really proud of them,” said Anna.
“They’re a great set of girls and they’ve worked really hard today against some very strong opposition.
“We like to enter these competitions with the aim to win. We were focused from the start with the aim to get out of the group. It’s a massive achievement to win it and it’s fantastic to represent Shrewsbury Town.”
However, in the final, there was to be one winner and Shrewsbury ensured it would be them who will be making the trip up to Huddersfield next month as they won 7-2, much to the delight of their manager, Anna Perks.
Their final opponents were Northampton Town, who had won every match on their march to the final having beaten Walsall (2-1), Wolves (4-2), Burton (4-2) before putting three past Crewe without reply in the semi-final.
Shrewsbury had to work hard to progress from their group and after beating Port Vale (5-3), Birmingham City (5-1) and coming back from two goals down to draw 2-2 with Crewe Alexandra. They then defeated Walsall 2-0 in to book their place in the final.
The regional finals were made up from eight different teams, with each school side representing their Football League club.
Shrewsbury, who are represented by Thomas Telford School, won the Shropshire schools competition to play in the prestigious tournament which will see the eventual Northern and Southern finalists battle it out at Wembley before the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy final in April.
Shrewsbury Town have taken a huge step closer towards playing at Wembley Stadium after winning their regional finals in the Football League Kinder+Sport Girls Cup at Shrewsbury Powerleague on Thursday.