Courtney Sweetman-Kirk insists there is still plenty of work to do despite Doncaster Rovers guaranteeing themselves a top-two FA WSL 2 finish with a 2-1 win at London Bees.
After draws in their previous two matches had delayed the promotion party, it looked like being third time unlucky too as the sides were locked at 1-1 at half-time with Sweetman-Kirk’s strike cancelling out Emma Whitter’s opener.
London Bees 1-2 Doncaster Rovers Belles
FA WSL 2
The Hive
Sunday 27 September 2015
But just moments after the restart Sweetman-Kirk struck again to guarantee Doncaster Rovers a top-two finish, although the WSL 2 top-scorer is not about to stop there with her sights set on the title.
“It feels amazing, I think it puts a few demons to bed to be honest,” said Sweetman-Kirk, who has 22 league goals for the campaign.
“We sat here last day of the season [last year] on this pitch, 9-0 knowing it wasn’t good enough.
“The performance wasn’t quite up to that but at the end of the day promotion is promotion and we’re ecstatic.
“It’s a great occasion for the club and we’re back where we belong. I’m sure we’ll have some fun tonight but as of Tuesday we’re back on it.
“We’ve still got a job to do. I know we’ve achieved promotion but that’s only half the job, we want to go up as champions.
“I think we can do very well [next season]. We’ve acquitted ourselves well when we played Sunderland in the Continental Cup. I think we matched Man City for 45 minutes.
“You look at Sunderland and how well they’ve done and I think that’s a model that everyone can look at. We won’t just be there to make up the numbers.”
As for London Bees coach Julian Broomes he could see the positives in his side’s performance despite failing to take a point against the WSL 2 leaders.
“I thought it was a fantastic performance,” he said. “All season we’ve been pushing to put in a good performance against one of the top three teams.
“We did it against Yeovil and I’m really pleased that we’ve done it against Doncaster.
“But we’re sitting in the changing room a little bit disappointed that we didn’t get a point out of the game when we took the lead.
“As many chances as they created, they didn’t hit the target and neither did we. When we had a few opportunities, we really needed to take them. On another day, we would’ve come away with two or three goals.
“We wanted to go with a more attacking formation of our 4-4-2 diamond so that we could have Emma [Whitter] and Lucy [Loomes] up front so that their pace would worry them and give them something to think about.”
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