📝 Women's Match Preview: Portishead Town (H)

Exeter City Women return to St James Park on Sunday for an all-important league clash against Portishead Town.

After a brilliant team effort dispatched the Grecians out of the FA Cup in November, the Possets have endured a grueling winter spell. Eight successive defeats, including heavy losses at AFC Bournemouth and Moneyfields, looked set to derail their season.

However, with the relegation trap door starting to loom large, the Somerset side have bounced back with three successive wins. An all-important victory over lowly Larkhall Athletic has been backed up with a quick double over Selsey, taking Town away from trouble and beginning to look above them rather than below. It is a run of results that has also seen three consecutive clean sheets.

Chip Wright and Meg Harding have established a strong squad, Rosie Hill, Shannon Holloway, Amy Clark, Laura Barrett, Alanna Torrington, Emily Lindsey, Ellie Strippel and Nathalie Zajaczkowski providing a strong spine to the team.

The two sides have met twice already this season, the Grecians easing to a win at Bristol Road in October. Sarah Stacey scoring either side of a Connie Pengelly goal. The FA Cup fixture a month later saw a win for the Possets, Emily Lindsey punishing a defensive error before Ellie Strippel sealed the win with a stunning late free kick.

Whilst Sunday provides another fantastic opportunity to showcase Women’s football at Exeter City, with Abbie Britton and Aaron Wakley’s team top of the division, the importance of three points is consequential. With Cardiff City’s form relentless, the Grecians know that they will realistically need to win all five of their remaining games to take the title and so this weekend’s game has added significance.

Tickets

Adults can watch for just £5 and under-18s priced at just £3. Trust members can save £2 on the cost of an adult ticket and the Junior Grecians offer of a free child with an adult ticket is valid for this match. A special hospitality package is also available.

How to Buy

Tickets are now on sale in the club shop and via your online ticketing account:

• Adults: £5
• Under-18s: £3

Junior Grecians come free with paying adult. Simply add an adult and Junior Grecians ticket to your basket and the system will automatically reduce the JGs ticket to zero on checkout. No restriction on where you sit. 

The Selco BW Stand only is open, however further stands will be opened should demand require so. So let's Pack the Park and back Exeter City Women! 

Existing Women's Season Tickets remain valid for this fixture.

Fan Zone and Junior Grecian Zone

The fan zone will be in action on Sunday, with fun and games including inflatable target practice. The Juinor Grecians Zone will also be open with table football, FIFA and a food kiosk. 

Her Game Too

This will be the second time the club have hosted a Her Game Too dedicated weekend following a successful pair of matches in October 2021, when the men hosted Newport and the women hosted Plymouth Argyle.

For both matches, the two sides will warm up in Her Game Too t-shirts and there will be stadium announcements, big screen graphics and articles in the match day programme about Her Game Too. Alongside this, Her Game Too will be providing mini-flags for supporters, and there will be a selfie board in the fan zone for supporters to grab some pre-match snaps!

We will also be promoting the campaign across our social media channels to highlight some of the issues faced by women within a sporting environment.

The women’s team have also chosen to use their St James Park appearance to raise money for City Community Trust’s Peter Eveleigh, who was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease last year. With this, there will be an online auction – including signed Lionesses memorabilia – in the build up to the game and they will also wear t-shirts supporting this cause, alternating between the warm up and pre-game line-up photos.

Exeter City is committed to ending all forms of discrimination. Should you hear anything at St James Park which you think is not right, you can text ‘HELP ECFC’ to 62277 to report discrimination anonymously.

You can keep up to date with Exeter City's Her Game Too activities by following @HerGameToo_ECFC on Twitter.

Pete Eveleigh Fundraiser

At Sunday's fixture we welcome our guests of honour, Pete Eveleigh and family. Many of you will know Pete, our popular inclusion lead at Exeter Community Trust, through his fantastic work across our community and from playing football locally.

Pete was recently diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and, always one to think of others, he and his family want to find some positivity by raising awareness of this disease. 

A #TeamEvo campaign has been launched which will raise awareness of #MND and also help to raise funds for Pete and his family.

As a friend and college to many members of the Women's Team Staff, this week the team will launch an auction to help raise money for Darby Rimmer MND Foundation. 

The auction can be accessed through the QR code on this page, with some fantastic items to bid for. Steph Houghton, whose Husband Stephen is diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, has donated signed boots, whilst there are also signed items from Reading Women FC, Ollie Watkins, Pierce Sweeney and more...

Head to the site to see what is on offer and help raise funds for a charity close to our hearts.

Programme

The back-to-back edition - all for the same bargain price of £3 - has two front covers. Once you've read one half, just flip over to the other side and begin the new edition! 

In this edition, both Joe White and Mollie Taylor pick their 5-a-side dream teams, there is more on the HerGameToo campaign, plus there is a special feature on the women's top scorer Sarah Stacey.