Dalton’s dream teams: Simply the best

Part two of Sent Her Forward’s look back at the players who have most impressed and made me smile in best part of six years of reporting on women’s football

Deanna Cooper (centre) and Jay Blackie (right), two of the finest footballers I’ve seen, make both my first XIs (Photo: Kevin Richards)

I must have seen at least a dozen of those who took part in this summer’s Women’s World Cup in live club games.

Yet my selections for my Best Ever Team represent a footballing universe far broader than the game’s top global competition – or even just the Women’s Super League.

Dalton’s dream teams: A few of my favourite things

A walk down Memory Lane as Sent Her Forward recalls some of the finest players I’ve had the privilege of watching

Leigh Farley scored the first goal I ever saw live in women’s football – but she did far more than that (Photo: Dave Burt)

It’s almost seven years since I began watching women’s football – and nearly six since I started reporting on it on Sent Her Forward.

Time for a list or two, I think.

Pompey star Hillier bows out with ultimate club accolade

Hillier led Portsmouth Ladies in their first ever game at Fratton Park in December 2013 (Photo: Jordan Hampton)

For a footballer who means so much to a club, Gemma Hillier’s retirement from Portsmouth, the team she has represented for more than 17 years, was a rather ill-fitting anti-climax.

Goal glut reveals gulf between Super League hopefuls and rest of Premier League

Round-up of today’s Premier League action

Portsmouth gained revenge for their defeat at Lewes earlier in the season (Photo: James Prickett)

The gulf between the ambitious Premier League sides still craving a Super League future and the rest was illustrated emphatically in today’s crazy scores in the league’s Southern division.

That old familiar feeling as friends reunited cancel each other out

Portsmouth succumbed to a late goal for the second game in succession (Photo: James Boyes)

Lewes 1 (Carter 87)
Portsmouth 0

Familiarity  may breed contempt, but it can also breed football stalemates – and that was the perhaps inevitable outcome at the Dripping Pan today as a host of former team-mates marked each other out of a disappointingly scrappy game.

Charlton seal clean sweep against Pompey as they tune up for cup finals

Manager Riteesh Mishra wants Charlton to treat every remaining game this season as a cup final (Photo: Jordan Hampton)

Portsmouth 0
Charlton Athletic 3 (Sullivan 20; Dixson 24; Graham 79)

Charlton Athletic limbered up for a month of cup finals with a straightforward victory over an enthusiastic and committed – but inexperienced – Portsmouth side who must be sick of the sight of them by now.

Portsmouth Ladies sign formal deal with men’s club

Mick Williams (left) and Mark Catlin, pictured with Portsmouth commercial director Anna Mitchell, both emphasised the importance of being part of the “Pompey family”

While West Ham United were, some might say, being shamed into taking over the women’s team that bear their name and Lewes were talking about equal budgets for their men’s and women’s senior sides, Portsmouth Ladies chairman Mick Williams was quietly going into bat for the club he holds so dear to his heart.