Midfielder Sophie Bramford is in confident mood heading into Sunday’s Women’s Challenge Cup clash with Boldmere St Michaels but insists Wolves will not be taking their fourth-tier opposition lightly.
Having scored in Wolves’ recent derby wins over West Bromwich Albion and Stourbridge, the latter being an 8-0 win in the first round of the Women’s FA Cup last weekend, Bramford believes the team are in high spirits heading into this weekend’s meeting at Compton Park and will be doing everything possible to progress into the next round of a competition which Wolves have won the last two seasons.
On returning to Wolves this summer
“I’m absolutely loving it and it’s just what I expected it to be. I feel like I had my expectations because since I’ve been away, I’ve heard about how much the team has progressed and internally how many things have changed.
“But it really has just taken me by surprise really and it’s more than I could ever have imagined.”
On scoring in the last two wins
“As a centre-midfielder, I feel like scoring is very important. But the good thing about our team is that we have a lot of players all over the pitch who can score goals.
“As we know, we’ve got an unbelievable front three – whoever is playing on the front line, we know they are capable of scoring goals.
“But in tough games, you can’t just rely on the strikers to score, we have to have a lot of diversity in the team and if centre-mids and defenders can get on the scoresheet as well, it’s inevitably going to help the team in ways you can’t imagine.”
On aiming for a third Challenge Cup title in a row
“I’m more confident than ever. We take this cup really seriously and we put as much preparation time and effort into this cup than we do with any other cup or any other league game.
“We’re definitely going to go into this game with a positive mind set and we know we can deliver the result that we need.”
On treating Boldmere with respect
“We’ve talked about this at training, we can’t take them lightly and we know that they’ve got some good players that have got good technical ability and have been round football for a long time.
“We’re going to take this game the same way that we take any other game, we’ve prepared the exact same way, we’ve planned it, we’ve discussed it and we’re confident that we’re going to get the result we want.
“But we haven’t got any complacency at all and we know that if we don’t set out what we prepare to do then we have got a chance of letting that result slip.”
On taking confidence into this weekend
“Training has been really good this week. Off the back of the 8-0 win over Stourbridge, the spirits are high, the camp are in a really good mood and it’s always good to go into the back of another game off the back of a win.
“Training’s been really enjoyable and we’ve covered what we’ve needed to cover so hopefully we can go out and deliver that on Sunday.”
