While Bristol Rovers’ men’s team will be playing a Premier League team in the FA Cup third round in Ipswich Town on Sunday afternoon, Rovers’ women will be stationed around 170 miles west taking on top-flight opposition of their own when they face WSL outfit Aston Villa.
When reflecting on the women’s team’s rapid rise of recent years, you have to take a step or two back to truly capture and appreciate the significant progress they’ve made within such a short period of time.
Last season’s promotion to the National League, the fourth tier of women’s football in England, was the club’s biggest achievement to date. Now, they await another colossal day in their brief history when testing their qualities against professional, international players who play for one of the most historic clubs in Europe at the top end of the English pyramid.
“I try not to,” manager Nathan Hallett-Young told Bristol Live when asked whether there are times where he pinches himself. “I think I’ve just got to kind of get used to the norm.
“When you cast your mind back to the point when we started and we were literally playing on pitches with cabbages on, like it’s just mental. It’s just another world and I’m very grateful for the Community Trust taking us on the initial point. I’m grateful that the club have now taken us on into this kind of new era. But I think it’s one of those things where it’s great to see how far we’ve come. But also I can’t and I rest on my laurels.
“It’s one of those ones of like, okay, now I now need to be even better than I was last year and now I have to go again and keep upscaling myself and pushing myself to kind of push the girls and push the rest of the staff as well.
“I think that’s the key to this is making sure that we’re all in a position where we understand that we’re interchangeable and we can only be as good as we were yesterday and keep challenging ourselves to be better every day. Hopefully that progression keeps pushing us further up the pyramid.”
Hallett-Young has witnessed the Gas Girls’ rise first hand since their reformation back in 2019 while working with Rovers’ Community Trust and on Sunday will face his biggest test as a coach in the opposition dugout of the Bescot Stadium in Walsall.
Up until the end of last season, the Gas had been under the Trust’s control before Rovers majority shareholder Hussain AlSaeed made the decision to put it under the Gas’ umbrella with all home games to be played at the Mem, although they are still fondly referred to by their previous official title of ‘the Gas Girls’.
Everything about Rovers’ proceedings in recent years radiates ambition with the Gas currently achieving initial expectations in the National League, being sat in fifth out of 12 teams. However, they still had to beat a side from the division above in Oxford United to set up this weekend’s FA Cup tie, the first time in which they’ve reached the fourth round.
A postponement of the original date for the game against the U’s meant that both teams knew that the prize of Aston Villa away awaited the victorious side with Oxford naturally the clear favourites.
However, a famous 3-2 victory in mid-December with a brace from player of the match Daisy Ackerman saw the Gas progress as the lowest ranked team remaining in the competition.
“It’s funny. If you saw the camp on the Tuesday, it was on the floor before the Oxford game,” Hallett-Young chuckled. “Best way to explain it is we came into training and I basically went like, ‘I’ve had an idea. I want to change the system up. I want to change us up’ and that out of sync routine sent the girls kind of haywire.
“So it was very much just like, we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re questioning everything. The initial thought was we’re going to get battered here because we’d just changed everything, why did we change everything? And we were just there as management thinking ‘I don’t know why they’re thinking this because this is going to help us out’.
“It was just a structural change of making us a bit more stable. A bit more defensively savvy and less open which, when you then take it into the actual game side of things, it worked perfectly.
“It made it really hard for Oxford to get through us. It made it hard for them to create chances and if they did create chances, they were half chances and we then gambled on the fact that they wouldn’t score.
“I’m happy to share that, if I cast back to that Tuesday because it’s just kind of mental, if anything because I don’t understand why we were losing our heads there. But then obviously we came in on the Friday and I kind of had a sense at that point.
“It’s been a kind of similar point where we’ve built through the week and early in the week, it’s like, this is going to be a tough challenge and it’s few and far between and realistically, are we going to get this? Are we going to get a chance? Are we going to go through with it? But when you get to the Friday and you’re thinking, ‘Do you know what? We’ve trained really well here and we look sharp and we look ready.’ So there’s always every chance in a one off game.
“I mean, this is an even further challenge. They’re two leagues above where Oxford are and they’re all internationals so it’s a little bit bigger than playing an Oxford but even at that point we surprised ourselves in that game and hopefully we’ll surprise ourselves again this weekend.”
Villa currently occupy 7th place in an extremely congested mid-section of the WSL table after a tricky opening to the season which saw the departure of manager Robert de Pauw in December.
They’re now under the interim charge of former Bristol City striker Shaun Goater and haven’t played a competitive fixture since December 15 but are expected to still have more than enough quality to get the job done comfortably.
However, that doesn’t phase Hallett-Young and his players, who have been training over the Christmas period, with the Rovers manager keen to emphasise to his squad that it’s an occasion to be excited about, not nervous.
“I think that the thing that we’re questioning is how close can we go toe to toe,” he confessed. “I think we also want to be in a position where we want to make a really good account of ourselves and I think the only nerves that really come in for us is where the girls will be thinking, ‘I don’t want to make a mistake.’ Like this is on a big stage and [they] don’t want to make a mistake.
“From my side of things, from the coaching perspective, we’re in a good position. We looked at training Tuesday. Structurally, we look good. Vibe looks good. As long as we can carry out the instructions, we’re in a position that we should hopefully challenge or compete as close as we possibly can. That’s the main thing.
“I don’t think anyone’s expecting us to get a result but our job is simple. It’s if plan A doesn’t work then we’ll go to plan B and plan C and whatever we need to do. But it’s also just managing each phase as best we can and if we’re in a position where they haven’t scored for 10 minutes, great. If we get to half-time and they haven’t scored, we’re on cloud nine. I think it can go to that point. If we get opportunities, if we score, I think we’ll be ecstatic.
“So it’s the little small margins that we’re going to be looking for to basically take out the game but the main thing is what performance can we put on and how close can we go?
“I think nerves are probably going to start to kick in between today and tomorrow,” Hallett-Young added, with this interview taking place on Thursday morning. “Training is probably going to be a pressure cooker tomorrow as well. I think you’ve got a squad all trying to fight for a place in the starting XI or just being named in the squad.
“We are going to have to make some decisions that are going to make some people unhappy, but overall the vibe is good I think.
“There’s more excitement than nerves which is positive. But yeah, we’ll see obviously how that continues to build across the week.”
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One of the biggest frustrations for everyone associated with Bristol Rovers as an entire football club is the fact that both the men’s game at Ipswich and the women’s game against Villa clash with the former moved to the Sunday for international broadcasting.
Fans travelling to Portman Road will be able to follow the happenings at the Bescot Stadium on their way home, assuming the tie is decided in 90 minutes, with kick-off in the West Midlands scheduled for 5:45pm.
However, despite a fixture clash, the women have still seen their initial away allocation sell out and will be cheered on by a number of proud Gasheads in a game that will likely be the biggest of a number of players’ footballing careers.
Although the scheduling is frustrating, I think it’s a massive day for the club and hopefully one that both sides can celebrate,” Hallett-Young declared.
“I mean, it’s going to be a big challenge for both the men’s and the women’s but it could be a very historic day for us both and the club as a whole.
“Either way, it’s massive for us. The fact that we’re selling out our way allocation first and foremost, that’s huge for us and just having support there will be massive.
“I know a lot of it’s going to be kind of family and friends but also those supporters that have been there from day one. I’ve just been there from day one. In those positions you’re thinking, ‘If we have those guys that have been there with us all the way through it’ I think that’ll calm the girls more than anything, knowing that we have some fans there as well.
“I don’t know what Villa average but yeah, I’m expecting it to be a couple of thousand in there so let’s see what we get.”