Pride Park Women bring 2025 to a close at Moorways on Sunday with the Derbyshire FA Women’s County Cup 3rd Round tie against Derby County Women’s Development side.

Doug Outt previews the game:

Our opponents
Derby County Women’s Development play four tiers higher in the women’s pyramid in the National League Reserves Division and currently lie in fourth place after finishing as Winners of the Reserve Midland Division for three consecutive seasons.

Facts and Stats
Derby County Women won the Derbyshire County FA Women’s Cup for the first six years of the competition, from 2011/12 to 2016/17, and have won it 8 times overall - and have only failed to make the final once in the 11 years (there was no competition in the three years from 2020-2022 due to the pandemic) since the competition was launched.

This will be the third time The Pride have come up against „Ewe Rams” in the County Cup. In 2015/16 - only Pride Park’s second season at open age - the teams met at the semi-final stage. Despite going behind to two early goals, The Pride pulled one back to make it 1-2 at half-time, but ran out of steam in the second half to lose 1-7. In 2018/19 The Pride were 0-4 down at half-time and the game ended 0-13 with The Pride finishing with only nine players due to injuries.

Four of the current squad played in both of those games - Tash Collyer, Otty Baker, Jade Howell and Sophie Ayton, and Hannah Roberts and Summer Evans also played in the 2018 fixture. Summer Evans is currently injured but the others are expected to be involved on Sunday.

There’s no hiding the fact this will be The Pride’s most challenging game of the year; historically, Derby have had exceptionally comfortable wins against sides playing at Tier 7 (County League), so The Pride will be under no illusions about the magnitude of the challenge facing them, but will want to finish the year with a creditable performance.

Team News
Summer Evans remains sidelined with injury. As this is the final weekend before Christmas several players are unavailable, so there are likely to be a number of changes to the line up from last week’s game.

In Charge
The Referee for the game is Ben Pickering assisted by Carl Arrowsmith and Jack Pritchard.

How to watch
The game is at Moorways Sports Village, Moor Lane, DE24 9HY and kicks off at 1.30pm

Admission is free and all support is welcome! There is covered seating available for spectators in the grandstand and ample car parking. Car parking restrictions are not enforced on match days. Refreshments are available from the cafeteria in the main Pool building just across the car park. Please note only officials and players are permitted beyond the railings/gate in front of the grandstand and dogs (other than assistance dogs) are not permitted on site.

Can’t watch?
You can follow the game for goal updates on our website at prideparkfc.com, on our Facebook page and also on ‚X’ (formerly Twitter) @PridePark_FC