‘We know how good we can be’ – Blanchard cannot wait to get started in Super League with Crystal Palace

BY ANDREW MCSTEEN

Crystal Palace forward Annabel Blanchard admitted the squad had no doubts they were good enough to get promoted from the Women’s Championship after her side won the title at the end of last month to get promoted to the Super League for the first time.

“As a group, we know what we can achieve, we know how good we can be but, at the same time, we didn’t really discuss anything specific and didn’t discuss promotion,” the 22-year-old told the South London Press.

“We just take it game by game. We all know that we can be very, very good but at the same time, it’s football. We’ve had some not-so-good results this year and it’s just been about who can bounce back the quickest and try and keep the most consistency.

“It’s been a long, hard season and we’ve worked extremely hard. You always want to do well – you always want to achieve. I’m a very ambitious person but, at the same time, we did just take it game-by-game.

“It (promotion) is not something we actually really spoke about until probably about two, three games ago. We just kept our feet on the ground and worked hard each game. The main thing was just trying to pick up points every weekend. We’ve been very steady with how we’ve approached it and in the end, it’s worked out pretty well.”

The 0-0 draw at Selhurst Park against Sunderland in front of a record women’s crowd of 6,796 fans highlighted the close working relationship between the women’s team and the club overall, with the Palace Women’s side playing as full-time professionals for the first season in their history.

At the beginning of the season, Grace Williams was employed as the first head of women’s football, while former Charlton boss Laura Kaminski was brought in as manager.

And with the WSL secured already, it will mean a lot more work both on and off the pitch.

“It’s where the club deserves to be, it’s a massive club – the work that’s going on behind the scenes, it’s definitely where we deserve to be,” said Blanchard about the move up.

“It just shows two things; the growth not only of women’s football, but of this club in general. There’s been a lot of hard work that has gone in, the backing from Steve (Parish, chairman), Dougie (Freedman, director of football) and the board. Grace works very, very hard, day-in and day-out.

“Players have come in, staff have come in and together the whole group, we’ve really gelled very quickly, in quite a short space of time. It is down to what’s been implemented by the staff, what’s been implemented by the club and it is one club, it’s together and that’s shown on the pitch this year.

“It’s all come together. We don’t just stop here. We’re going to keep working, keep putting the graft in and hopefully it’s only up from here. The only thing now we can do is go and compete.”

PICTURE: KEITH GILLARD