Women’s football Morgan’s super strike sinks Southampton
FFION Morgan’s spectacular strike proved enough for Bristol City as they held on to claim a 1-0 victory over Southampton in FA Women’s Championship action on Sunday.
Morgan’s stunning strike 18 minutes in was the only goal of the contest, with the Robins having ‘keeper Fran Bentley to thank for a string of stunning saves throughout, in particular denying Southampton’s Beth Lumsden on numerous occasions.
Victory sees the league leaders move six points clear at the top of the table with four games to go and the visit of second-bottom Sheffield United to the Robins High Perand formance Centre next up on Sunday.
“We asked for a team performance and we got it,” said head coach Lauren Smith. “It wasn’t pretty at times. We had to go and clear our lines, defend well and manage the time well. It was a great team performance and I’m proud of it.
“We’ve spoken on a number of occasions about our clean sheets and how important they are and I think you can see that with the saves Fran Bentley made. The team thrive off those moments as well because it was a tough game where we had to defend really hard and then get up after the long balls at the other end. As a group we wanted to make sure we responded to the defeat last week and what a way to make that happen.”
Southampton were on top early on and could have opened the scoring just fourth minutes in, Beth Lumsden just unable to get onto the end of Ella Morris’ cross. However the visitors were ahead thanks to Morgan, her stunning volley from 20 yards out kissing the bottom of the crossbar and going in.
Saints continued to push throughout the rest of the half, Lumsden seeing a strong shot stopped by ‘keeper Bentley, though the Robins nearly doubled their lead in the final moments of the half. Morgan’s cross took a deflection off a Southampton defender
looked to be heading in, but the ball was bundled away.
Bentley’s keeping was proving crucial for the visitors in the opening stages of the second half, pulling off a string of crucial saves - one again from a Lumsden shot - to keep her side ahead. She also dealt with a speculative long-range effort from Alice Griffiths, and did enough to put off Katie Wilkinson, who could only hit the side-netting. She pulled off a couple more great stops to seal the three points.
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