Coventry pull off miracle . . . again!
COVENTRY UNITED may be the first team to complete two great escapes in the same season. They had to beat Watford on the final day yesterday to stay in the Championship and send the Hornets down. For 96 minutes, it looked out of their reach. Then up stepped Mollie Green to fire a sensational 30-yard free-kick into the top corner in the seventh minute of stoppage time.
It has been a remarkable five months for a club who were eight minutes from being liquidated in January. Two days before Christmas, players and staff were told during a Zoom call that they would lose their jobs and not be paid for December. But on
January 4 they were saved by Lewis Taylor, chief executive of Energy Angels, a Midlands-based energy company.
Though the club lived to fight another day, the FA were dutybound to impose a 10-point deduction because the liquidation process had been triggered. That left them on -4 points, 10 behind 11th placed Watford.
After three straight defeats at the start of January, few gave Jay Bradford and her team any hope of staying in the second tier. But a seven-game unbeaten run put them within touching distance of survival and, once again, they were saved at the final hour.
‘It’s a goal that fits the moment and it’s a goal that will go down in history. This story will go down in history, it will never be done again,’ said Bradford.
‘I don’t think the sanctions will be imposed the way they were on us. They’ll be adjusted, and rightly so. I hope nobody has to live through what we’ve been through.
‘That goal is Mollie Green all over. It’s her quality and calm head to strike the ball properly in that moment because it’s so easy to get that wrong.’
It was clear from the start that Coventry were the team who had to win. Katie Wilkinson had a header blocked on the line in the 10th minute before Green’s shot flew just wide of the far post.
Watford’s only shot on goal came from Gemma Davison, but her long-range effort was straight at goalkeeper Lucy Thomas.
Watford continued to sit back in the second half but it wasn’t until the final five minutes that Coventry really started to pile the pressure on, with ball after ball being sent into the Watford box.
It looked like Coventry’s moment had gone when Grace Riglar’s header hit a post and bounced wide, but there was still time for Green to be the heroine.
With her team’s future on the line, the former Manchester United midfielder, nicknamed ‘Ward-Prowse’ after the Saints set-piece specialist, struck the sweetest of free-kicks into the top-left corner. Watford’s players dropped to their knees as the Coventry bench erupted.
Somehow, against all they odds, they are still standing. Bradford said she would be celebrating with a beer. ‘We’ve had to keep a lid on our emotions. Now, we can enjoy the moment. We did the great escape!’ WATFORD: Ferguson, Kmita, Meiwald, Stobbs, Ward (Fatuga-Dada 56min), Ali, Chandler (Mann 87), Legg (Beckett 77), Henson, Davison (Fyfe 78), Georgiou. Booked: Georgiou, Beckett, Ali. Managers: Armand Kavaja and Laura Dyer. COVENTRY: L Thomas, Haigh, Johnson (Toussaint 74), Estcourt, Wilkinson, Fergusson (Orthodoxou 90+7), N’Dow, Green, F Thomas (Riglar 84), Morris, Hartley. Scorer: Green 90+7. Manager: Jay Bradford. Referee: Georgia Ball.