Belles head coach Zoey Shaw feels the start of their Women’s FA Cup campaign will be a special experience for a lot of her young side as they look to go on a cup run.
The Belles head north to face Chester-Le-Street Town on Sunday in the second qualifying round of the competition, and Shaw believes the trip to Durham can be a refreshing break away from league action.
“It’ll be nice to have that break from the league if we’re being honest, just to have that change in focus is something that I think can really help the girls, we’ll see what Sunday brings but we’re all really looking forward to it,” she said.
“The FA Cup is such a special tournament in football and it’s one that we’re all really excited to take part in once again, this’ll be some of the girls first experience in this competition so we want to do really well.
“I’m hoping that the girls want to get a little bit of a run going in the cup this year, if we can get past this game then you never know what sort of opponents you could come up against in the next round.”
The Belles’ hosts Chester-Le-Street Town have had a similar start to Shaw’s side as they sit seventh in Division One North after two wins of their own in the league, and the head coach thinks a solid week of training has them in good stead ready for another difficult test.
“We’ve had another really good week in training, we’ve tried to see what other positions other players can play in too just to give us that bit of flexibility if we need to switch it up, so there may be a few changes on Sunday,” Shaw added.
“We don’t know an awful lot about Chester-Le-Street to be honest, so there will probably be an element of surprise by the time we kick-off come Sunday, but that’s what it has been like with most of the teams this season anyway so that won’t faze us.
“We’ll give them the respect that they deserve, and we head into the game this weekend expecting to have a very tough game in prospect, but like I’ve said before, we’ve prepared well and we’re ready to go.”