- Forest Women record back-to-back 4-0 wins
- Anderson, Axten and Tudor amongst the goalscorers
The Reds recorded another 4-0 victory as they defeated Loughborough Lightning at Eastwood in the WNL Northern Premier Division.
Andy Cook made two changes to his side, with Georgia Hewitt and Sophie Tudor coming back into the starting line-up.
Forest asserted their dominance from the off and it didn’t take long for The Reds to break the deadlock and open the scoring, as inside four minutes, the ball broke loose for Becky Anderson whose deflected effort looped over the stranded goalkeeper and into the net.
Soon after, Hewitt set the ball wide for Charlotte Greengrass to strike, but her shot flew high and wide.
But in the 25th minute, Forest made it 2-0. Rosie Axten found space on the edge of the area, shifted the ball onto her left foot and found the bottom corner via the post.
The half-time whistle blew to mark the end of an opening 45 minutes which The Reds had dominated.
HALF-TIME: Forest Women 2-0 Loughborough Lightning
Loughborough saw a goal disallowed shortly before the hour mark for a foul on goalkeeper Emily Batty, shortly before Forest made it 3-0.
A neat exchange between Sophie Tudor and Naomi Powell resulted in the latter advancing to the byline before pulling the ball back for Tudor to bundle home from close-range.
Batty was called into action in the 77th minute when she dealt well with a Loughborough strike from distance.
Sophie Bonser, Alice Higginbottom, Grace Walters, Olivia Cook and Mai Moncaster were all introduced with 15 minutes remaining, and Bonser helped contribute to a goal following her introduction.
After her cross resulted in Rosie Axten heading over from close-range, Bonser’s excellent free-kick delivery was diverted into her own net by a Loughborough player to make it 4-0 in stoppage time.
The full-time whistle blew after Higginbottom shot wide in the dying embers of the contest, with Andy Cook’s side putting another three points on the board and recording another convincing win.
The result leaves them sitting fifth in the WNL Northern Premier Division, only five points off the league leaders.
FULL-TIME: Forest Women 4-0 Loughborough Lightning
ANDY COOK’S VIEW
“It was a really good performance. We said to them at the end that we were so close to scoring maybe six or seven.
“Loughborough are fighting for their lives. Three teams go down this year so that’s why they came here and did what they did. Every team that play Forest are going to play that way, they always give 100% and we have to break them down.
“We wanted a quick start and wanted to get at them, so to get the quick goal was fantastic. We said before the game that we had to earn the right to play, so to score four goals was fantastic.
“They tried to press in the second half, but we stuck with the way we were playing. Lyndsey Harkin and Charlotte Steggles were fantastic, and all the subs who came on were brilliant as well. We are very pleased.”