Proud and plenty to ponder from Leeds United Women cup final - Cath Hamill

My Leeds United Women team-mates and I were gutted to come so close and then lose on penalties in our County Cup final against Brighouse Town on Thursday.
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I had been nervous all week and I couldn’t eat all my breakfast on the day of the game.

I wasn’t worried about our opponents as such – they do compete in the division above so we were wary – but we’ve faced a lot of those players previously so we knew what they were capable of.

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I’d say I was more nervous that a lot of the girls I coach with the Leeds United Foundation who were coming to watch.

LATE LEVELLER: Kathryn Smith, top, equalised for Leeds United Women with the last kick of last week’s County Cup final with Brighouse Town which the Whites eventually lost on penalties.LATE LEVELLER: Kathryn Smith, top, equalised for Leeds United Women with the last kick of last week’s County Cup final with Brighouse Town which the Whites eventually lost on penalties.
LATE LEVELLER: Kathryn Smith, top, equalised for Leeds United Women with the last kick of last week’s County Cup final with Brighouse Town which the Whites eventually lost on penalties.

Every week I’ll tell them to do this and to do that – now I had to show them I could follow my own instructions!

We were so pleased with the turnout at the West Riding County FA – so many Leeds fans came along to support.

There was such a big queue outside the ground that, before kick-off, we had to try and drag out the coin toss to get as many people through the turnstiles as we could.

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So we stood in the centre circle having a natter about what we’d been up to that day – the linesman had kebab for tea, the referee had pizza

We were expecting a good few to show up but not that many.

Having that many fans in the crowd was brilliant especially when Kathryn Smith scored our equaliser with, quite literally, the last kick of the game!

I would say the final was a textbook ‘game of two halves’.

Brighouse were by far the better team in the first half – quicker and first to everything.

But we were well organised and kept our defensive shape, so we did well to go into half-time just 1-0 down.

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Town probably play at that pace every week and it took us some time to get used to it.

We showed – as we did against Wolves, who also play in the tier above, in September – that we are capable of adapting, and I wonder if we were playing at that pace every Sunday whether we’d be sharper from the first kick, too.

We were much better in the second half and really deserved our goal to get us level after the performance we showed.

I even got more involved with the celebration, which I don’t normally do but everyone was buzzing.

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It was an amazing feeling – our goalkeeper, Georgia Wattam, ended up bulldozing Katie Ramsden in the excitement.

I thought Katie was brilliant on Thursday. She’s only 16 but she was easily the player of the match, for me.

As a player, she’s got everything – she’s technical, she’s quick, she’s got strength that you don’t expect.

When you’re up against older players, you wonder if the physicality is going to be the same. No problem for Katie.

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At one point, the ball was taken off her and she just came back, used her strength and properly outmuscled her opponent to get the ball back.

The crowd were loving it. When we asked Katie if she wanted to take a penalty she wasn’t one hundred per cent sure.

I told her that she should do it – we’ve all seen her banging them in at training – and that if it went wrong, it wouldn’t matter.

She was upset when the goalkeeper saved it. Katie wants to do well, which is understandable, but I know she will go far with how great and focused she is.

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We all put an ‘arm around her’ and told her to keep her head up.

She should be very proud of herself, as it takes a lot of confidence to go up there and give it a go.

I would think it would be the first time that she’s done that in front of such a big crowd or, if she has, it can’t have been many times.

But she’ll learn from it and go into the next one with more confidence having been through it before.

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You can’t beat yourself up too much when you lose a game on penalties.

In the second half, we really stuck together so I’m positive; to perform like that against a team in the division above is really uplifting.

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