Pride Park secured an ultimately impressive 4–3 away league victory in a high-tempo, attack-minded game at Long Eaton. After taking an early lead inside the first minute, the first half turned into a back-and-forth battle in which The Pride conceded three times to go in at the break 3-1 down, but showed resilience and attacking quality to regain control and score three second-half goals to seal the win.

After a two week gap without a game this fixture represented a potential “banana skin”, particularly as Long Eaton will have gained confidence from a run of six wins since the teams last met in December, including last weekend’s Derbyshire FA Womens County plate semi-final success.

For the third time in three games this season against Long Eaton, Pride took an early lead - with Beth Jones opening the scoring after being played in by Daisy Bowen after 32 seconds. On this occasion, however, Long Eaton equalised after 12 minutes. This gave the hosts an injection of belief and confidence and they had a good spell, moving the ball well and capitalising efficiently on a small number of chances, taking the lead on 29 minutes minutes and extending it further six minutes later. Pride Park continued creating openings but were not as efficient as Long Eaton in front of goal, and at the break It was 3-1 to the hosts. Nevertheless, despite not having played for three weeks, it had been a reasonably good first half performance for The Pride.

It was only the second League game this season in which Pride have been behind, and the first time they have been behind by two goals, so the second half was set up to provide a measure of the team - and they passed the test with flying colours as they upped an already high tempo, kept Long Eaton pegged back for long periods and relentlessly sustained pressure.

It took a while - and there were signs it might prove to be “one of those days” as the ball just wasn’t falling kindly - but the breakthrough finally came after 69 minutes as Beth Jones latched on to Emma Gittins’ pass to break through the defensive line and drive home from the edge of the area [3-2].

The goal gave Pride even greater purpose and they pressed and harried Long Eaton, keeping them penned in their own half for long periods and largely limiting them to isolated breakaways. A good indicator of the pressure was the number of corners - eight - for Pride in the second half (and twelve overall). The quality of Tash Collyer’s corners was exceptional and the only frustration for Pride was they hadn’t been able to make more of them - until the pressure finally told and Beth Jones headed home from a corner after 85’ minutes to level the scores [3-3] and complete her hat-trick.

Pride really had the bit between their teeth now and a minute later Summer Evans capped an energetic performance by directing Tash Collyer’s low cross over the keeper and into goal from six yards [3-4]. Pride were able to see out the remaining four minutes of normal time and two additional minutes without incident to secure the points.

It had been a notable second half response - showing character and desire to sustain pressure on Long Eaton up to the end of the game, denying them any attempts on goal, combined with improved shot accuracy. It had taken a high energy performance from the squad and rotation of players helped maintain the tempo at key moments in the game; there were noteworthy performances all round in a genuinely whole squad effort

The win extends the unbeaten league run to 18 games. The Pride are in league action again next weekend with a trip to Buxton Women (Sun 29th March, KO 1.30pm)