Rehanne Skinner was delighted that West Ham United women’s team were able to clinch a 2-1 victory over Bristol City, their first win of the calendar year.
Goals from Honoka Hayashi and Viviane Asseyi came either side of a strike from former Hammer Amalie Thestrup, as a resolute Hammers performance produced all three points.
Skinner’s side worked incredibly hard to cover every blade of grass in front of over 6,000 Robins fans and were rewarded for their efforts, after eleven agonising minutes of second half injury time.
Skinner praised the efforts of her team and the support of the away fans that had travelled down to Bristol at the full time whistle…
We’re delighted to come away with the three points.
It was a hard-fought game. I thought the players stuck to the gameplan and gave everything, working incredibly hard for one-another.
We took the two goals superbly, to be fair. It’s just great for the team and staff, with all of the hard work that everyone has been putting in, to get the three points over the line is massive.
Credit to everyone, those that started the game and those that finished, everyone put in a real shift for each other, it was a real team performance.
We’ve had a lot of good performances this season where we’ve deserved more.
We felt robbed of a point last weekend [against Spurs] based on the way that we played, and there’s been lots of situations where we haven’t quite got it over the line in games. A win has been coming, and I think that the belief and the trust in the process has been great from the team.
We had that belief today that we were going to get three points, and it just helps us to move forward to where we want to get to.
We want to keep improving on our results, we don’t want to be in the position that we’re in. We’re taking things one step at a time and one game at a time. That’s all we can do and we’ll keep chipping away with the aim of climbing the table.
Everyone was committed out there on the pitch, and Mini [Katrina Gorry] helped set the tone for that.
If we went back through how many tackles she’s put in today, the number will be through the roof, and just covered every blade of grass. To be fair, everybody was putting in those tackles, everyone’s committed to the way that we want to play.
All of the players are working hard for the fans, for the results and what we’re trying to achieve as a team. It’s a massive testament to the grit, the determination of the squad and the character that they have.
It was a fantastic response to Wednesday’s performance. We were playing a team that gave it everything, and all of our players worked as hard as they could to make sure we came away with a really important result.
This win is huge for us to take into the coming weeks.
At times, the results have made it a little bit deflating for the players, but the confidence in what we’re doing, in the way that we’re playing has always been there.
We just made better decisions at key times in the game today, which helped us, and that’s a huge thing to take into next week.
Moving forward, we obviously have lots of games left, and it’s our main focus now without the distractions of cup football.
I’d like to thank the fans for their commitment today.
It’s a long way to come, so the commitment from them is superb. We want to give back to them, because they’ve been really positive throughout the season and what we’re trying to do.
I’m grateful for their support. You could certainly hear them; at one point they were even drowning out the Bristol lot!
