On Wednesday evening Glentoran Women have the opportunity to clinch the Danske Bank Women’s Premiership title when they face Crusaders Strikers at Seaview.
The Glens are currently two points ahead of Linfield Ladies with a game in hand. If two teams finish on the same points at the end of the season, the title is awarded based on head-to-head results. As Glentoran have won both “Big Two” clashes this season, then a point on Wednesday or next week’s final game (v Sion Swifts at home) will be enough to bring the trophy to the Oval. So, everything to play for on Wednesday night.
In our home tie with Crusaders this season, the Glens were 1-0 winners, through a goal from Kerry Beattie.
General Manager Billy Clarke said in advance of the game: “With Linfield’s 4-2 defeat of Sion Swifts on Sunday past, our potential league winning position is now much clearer. Sion are now out of contention, but Linfield with 1 game to play can get 22 points and can still win the League title should we lose our final 2 games. We are on 21 points with 2 games to play and can get 27 points if we win our final 2 games.
On Wednesday we play Crusaders Strikers at Seaview which is now being billed as a potential League winning game for us. This will be no easy task. Crusaders have proved in their last 4 games that they are in good form and need to be respected. Our game at the Oval ended in our favor 1-0. It was a tough encounter with few scoring chances.
Having played our last scheduled fixture 7 weeks ago, when we beat Cliftonville at Seaview, we have played some training games against NI u17s and 19 and kept up our weekly training sessions. These have helped to keep us in physical condition and match fit.
We are looking forward to Wednesday night and getting back into playing a scheduled fixture. The enormity of the game will not be lost on our players as most if not all have been involved in our two previous Irish Cup Final wins with those games going out live and also big games as well.
Every game this season has been like a cup final and I expect Wednesday night’s to be similar and hopefully both teams put on a good show for the viewing public”.
This will be the first Women’s Premiership match to be streamed live by BBCSportNI here and on the BBC iPlayer with commentary by Nicola McCarthy, so Glentoran supporters will have no better opportunity to acquaint themselves with our exceptionally talented squad.
