Nottingham Forest head coach Carly Davies is looking forward to renewing her acquaintance with an old rival when her side face Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Women’s FA Cup this weekend.
The teams faced off plenty of times in tier three prior to Nottingham Forest gaining promotion to WSL2 – and Davies knows that a cup match, especially one that’s televised, means anything can happen.
“It’s a big moment for women’s football, I think, and just shows the direction that the game’s going,” she told SheKicks.net, “and obviously we’re honoured to have been selected for the game to be broadcast.
“We just want to make sure that we focus on our game as we normally do and hopefully put on a good display for anybody who’s watching.”
Carly Davies: Television cameras are part of the game now
Wolves host Forest at Hednesford on Saturday lunchtime – but Davies says the earlier kick-off won’t change her matchday plans.
“As the game continues to grow and broadcast plays a bigger part, I think we’ll see a lot more variety in kick-off time, so it’s a good opportunity for us to deviate away from what normal looks like. It’s good for the players to experience that as well. It can never be an excuse to not perform well.
“But we’re just excited. We’re looking forward to hopefully having another good cup run. We’ve done well over previous years, and obviously this year we want to be able to go one step further, with the current squad that we’ve got and the backing that we’ve got from the club.”
And she says she hopes the TV cameras from Channel 4 and TNT won’t have an impact.
“The girls are used to having cameras around. We do a lot of media at the club ourselves, the WSL are filming games all the time, doing media content with players and managers. So for us, it’s just important that we prepare for this game like we do for any other [so that] media and broadcast doesn’t become a distraction. It’s part of the game now, so we have to get used to it.”
Davies: Wolves will want to put on a good show
Davies completely understands why a television channel have picked this match between two long-standing foes.
“I know Macca [Dan McNamara, the Wolves manager], I know the Wolves staff and some of the players very, very well. So I know for them, you know, they’ll want to put on a good performance and showcase the quality of Tier 3. We’ve come from there ourselves and we did a lot of work and I think it’s a really good opportunity for people to see how far the women’s game has come, not only just in the top two leagues but also the [National League] northern and southern [Premier]. There’s some very good sides in both of those leagues, really well supported clubs that are doing exceptionally well, and Wolves are one of those.
“So they’re going to want to impose themselves on us, I’m sure, and they’re going to want to prove that they can compete with teams such as ourselves and teams in the higher league. So it’s definitely going to be a competitive fixture for sure.”
