Ladies FA Cup final

I have never really watched women's football before and always thought it would be boring with less skill or excitement...How wrong was I??!!!

As soon as it was announced that the Women's Cup final was to be held at Pride Park this year, Ange said she would be going and asked us if we wanted to go too so I thought it would be an interesting way to spend a Bank Holiday Monday afternoon.

The kick-off was 1pm and we got there in plenty of time to soak up the atmosphere. It was quite weird seeing vendors selling lots of flags, scarves and tee shirts but not a Ram to be seen. They were Mackems and Gooners merchandise.

We took our seats in the East stand upper to watch the warm ups


There wasn't very much segregation. There were fans of both teams all over the ground but it was a great atmosphere. Kids had those annoying horns and on every seat we were given these clapper things. They were loud but they were a lot easier to clap with and didn't make my hands sore.

Before the match began we stood to the National Anthem and watched as the teams were introduced to the match guests from the FA. The battalas of Liverpool Marched round the ground as they played.

The crowds were made up of all kinds of people. There were families that had travelled from Sunderland and London as well as groups of youngsters, Die hard football fans and lots and lots of girls football teams from all over the country. It was amazing as I looked round the ground there were red flags flying everywhere.

As for the game itself It was a phenomenal game of football. I wasn't expecting it to be so physical. I was astounded that there was much more skill and tactical play than you would normally get from a man's game. I couldn't get over how much more actual football they played than you normally get from a man's game.
1 major point was that there was no falling over and rolling all around the floor from every tackle and every touch. If a player went down, she was straight back up and on the ball. In fact the first time that a player stayed down it was because she was KOed and was carried off on a stretcher.

I was sort of supporting Sunderland...Well I have to say I have never been to a football game as a neutral before so we clapped and cheered for chances and good play from either end. IT was obvious from the start though that Arsenal would win. They totally outclassed Sunderland although the Mackems girls did put up a good fight and when it was 2-0 to the gooners in the dying minutes, they managed to pull one back.

The second half was fraught with injury. As I mentioned earlier one of the Sunderland team went off on a stretcher then not long after an Arsenal player was left on the ground and then there were a couple of other niggling tackles. As we approached full-time Joe took bets off everyone to guess how many minutes of injury time there would be. Emma won with 7 minutes.

So even though Sunderland had battled well towards the end, Arsenal were the winners and presented with the Women's cup trophy. Final score 2-1 to Arsenal.

We stayed for the presentations although lots didn't. They presented the Sunderland team with their loser medals first and the player of the match which also incidentally went to a Sunderland player. When Arsenal were presented their trophy, there was lots of champagne fountains all over the pitch and fireworks and the PA played the Arsenal song which was to the tune of Donna Summer's Hot stuff

We stayed until the very end when both sets of players had done their laps of honour and the TV cameras had followed the Arsenal girls running round soaking each other with Champagne!