Harrogate Railway Ladies again played host to Silsden Ladies today (Sunday 23 February 2014), this time in the league cup quarter finals.
After a convincing win last week Railway were the favourites to win today, but as predicted by the railway managers, Silsden were looking for revenge and came along with a great determination. Railway looked bright enough to start with but after 15 minutes Silsden were snuffing out all attacks made by railway and in turn put the railway defence on their back step and creating the first shot on goal which was tapped over the bar by Rails keeper. When Railway finally turned the Silsden defence with a long ball from midfield, Dee Swales went one on one with the keeper and neatly slotted the ball into the bottom right corner on 27 minutes. This helped settle Rails but not for long as Silsden pressed hard right up to the half time whistle.
The second half didn’t look much better for railway with wayward passes and missed tackles all over the park, Silsden were looking like they could score one back and this they did on the 81st minute with a shot that was just beyond rails keeper, 1-1 and extra time looking looming. How ever the Railway Ladies dug deep and applied a fantastic amount of pressure on the Silsden defence, for 6 minutes the ball never went more than 5 metres from the box, eventually Dee found a way through the middle and stab the ball over the line with 2 minutes to go.
Silsden won a corner in stoppage time, with a high ball coming in Skipper Ali Purvis jumped high to head away just as the final whistle was blown.
Railway put on a poor performance today but still managed to get the win for a place in the semi final, well done for that, but work is required by most players to improve before the next game in two weeks.
