Media Release
By Greg Danvers – Media Manager
Bill Turner Trophy (Girls) match played Thursday 31 July at Crawford Park, Alstonville.
Alstonville High might be considered a minnow in terms of the size of the village and school numbers but that didn’t diminish their resolve to win in the Bill Turner Trophy.
The Bill Turner Trophy is a 15-years-and-under High Schools knock-out football tournament for girls and the equivalent, the Bill Turner Cup for boys, is contested by teams from Cairns in the north to Melbourne in the south.
From around 400 schools the girls from Alstonville can now boast being in the last eight standing teams after beating Coffs Harbour High 3-1 in a penalty shoot out at Crawford Park.
“Missed opportunities sent us to penalties,” Alstonville High coach Maria Bramley-O’Connor said.
“We are just a little school in a little town and the passion that the girls show when they come out and play this game is unbelievable.”
The scores were locked at nil-all after two halves of 30minutes and two 10minute halves of Golden Goal additional time could not separate the sides.
Alstonville went on to win the game scoring three goals from the spot while Coffs Harbour could only put one past Villa’s ‘keeper Shana Povey-Hyatt.
“They made hard work of that,” Bramley-O’Connor said.
“I think we could have capitalised right at the beginning, we had so many chances that we could have been four nil up at half time.”
Alstonville’s next match – a quarter final berth – will be at home where they’ll take on either last year’s champions Hunter Sports High or Maitland’s Grossman High. A win there will send Villa to Newcastle for the finals series in the first week of September.
Coach of Alstonville, Maria Bramley-O’Connor interview here:
Coach of Coffs Harbour, Col Graham interview here:
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