Town overcome Brackley
Northampton Town Ladies belatedly started 2014 with a win against Brackley Sports.
After the previous week’s fixture was postponed due to the recent bad weather, the girls seemed keen to get back in to their League campaign and began strongly against a determined Brackley side.
Despite dominating large parts of the first half, the Cobblers were wasteful in front of goal and missed a host of chances before finally taking the lead midway through the half through Nicole Maunders.
The game continued in much the same way as the half went on, with the Cobblers creating chances and only being rarely troubled by the odd Brackley counter attack. As it looked as though they would go in to the break with a narrow lead, the Cobblers added a second through Jess Charles direct from a corner to deservedly go in to the break with a more healthy lead.
If there were to be more goals in the second half, the feeling was that the next goal would be vital to determining the way the game went, and it was the Cobblers who came out strongly after the break. After missing a couple more chances, they finally got the third 7 minutes into the second half through Maunders.
This goal seemed to break the Brackley resolve as well as giving the Cobblers girls a confidence boost and the second half became a much more one way affair, with the Cobblers playing some good stuff and creating plenty of chances with Alex Bartlett, having her best game of the season, at the heart of most of Cobblers attacking movements.
The finishing was now much more clinical and the goals began to flow. By full time, the Cobblers had added 7 second half goals to win the game 9-0. Maunders finished with 5 goals, Emma Myatt, Beth Hope and Hollie Craddock also helped themselves to one each.