Charlton Athletic head coach Karen Hills said that she was proud of her side’s performance despite being held to a 1-1 draw by Sheffield United at The Valley yesterday.
Kayleigh Green took advantage of a defensive error to fire the hosts into the lead inside 20 minutes in SE7. Charlton Athletic looked like they had done enough to earn themselves an opening day three points but Bex Rayner levelled matters for Sheffield United at the death with a 25-yard wonderstrike.
When speaking to the media after the match, Charlton Athletic boss Hills said that she was proud of her side’s performance while she applauded Rayner’s equaliser.
“That goal was worthy of winning any game, it was a fantastic strike and you can’t take anything away from it,” Hills said. “Could we have done more to prevent it? Probably, but you can’t take anything away from the strike.
“Overall, I thought it was two competitive teams. It was the first game of the season, not really knowing what we were going to face and I always say just don’t lose the first game.
“We put on a show that hopefully, the crowd can be proud of. I know that I am proud of it.”
Sheffield United looked dangerous with corner kicks but Charlton Athletic defended resolutely throughout. Hills was pleased that her side were not guilty of conceding a goal from a set-piece.
She said “I thought we were really good with (defending) corners and I think that is something that we have really worked on. We know that everybody is going to be putting bodies right on the goalkeeper but I have a fantastic group of players that are willing to go and head the ball and put their bodies on the line.
“From a defensive point of view, dealing with dead ball set-pieces and balls coming over the top, I thought we dealt with it unbelievably well. Rebecca McKenna coming in, she’s new to our team and I thought she was outstanding today.
“We looked at their strengths and knew that their channel balls would be a problem. I feel that our full-backs really helped our centre-backs to deal with those threats in a way that we didn’t actually concede a goal from it.
“We conceded from a long ball where unfortunately, we had a player who was back to goal and maybe the drop down just didn’t quite sit. She had three players running onto her with the momentum and to be fair to her (Bex Rayner), she took the ball out of her feet and hit an absolute worldie.
“Fair play to her, but it was a pleasure to see how solid we were defensively in nearly all of the key moments.”
Charlton Athletic are back in action on Saturday evening when they travel to Reading in the Barclays Women’s Championship.