Wednesday night saw a repeat of the three points and abundance of goals from Notts County’s first win of 2015 away at Bristol, but this time in front of their home fans at Meadow Lane.
The Pies beat visitors Sunderland 4-2 and as a result currently sit top of the WSL 1 goal scoring chart with eleven goals, five of which have been scored by the in-form Ellen White who is now the top scorer in the league.
The Lady Black Cats top scorer is Beth Mead, who gave the North-East side an early lead after just 4 minutes, lobbing ex-Sunderland keeper Carly Telford from just inside the box after a perfect pass from Vicky Greenwell.
And Greenwell assisted again shortly afterwards, providing a cross for Kelly McDougall to shoot from close range but the midfielder fired just wide.
With just over a quarter of an hour played, Sunderland demonstrated an impressive counter-attack, with Abbey Joice collecting the ball deep inside the visitors half, before releasing it to Brooke Chaplen who ran all the way to the opposition box before passing to Mead whose shot was saved well by Telford.
For the rest of the first-half, County then stole the show and a flurry of goals followed for the Midlands outfit.
On 22 minutes Dani Buet’s free-kick deflected heavily off White, past Rachael Laws into the Sunderland goal, and just one minute later White scored again, slotting it into the bottom right-hand corner after an assist from Rachel Williams.
The only interruption to this period of County domination was on 26 minutes when Carly Telford pulled off a superb save – showcasing the reasoning behind her WSL team of the year inclusion – from a Sarah McFadden header, which was then cleared off the line by Amy Turner.
Sunderland captain Steph Bannon was injured during the subsequent goalmouth scramble and had to be treated at the side of the pitch which meant the visitors were temporarily down to ten. County’s Jess Clarke took full advantage and ran up the pitch to score her first of the season and the hosts’ third of the night.
Gemma Wilson then came on to replace Bannon before Rachel Williams scored a fourth for Notts, in a dominant 15 minutes for the side, powering her header over a despairing Laws after a prefect cross from Sophie Walton cross.
The visitors looked much more dominant after the break and created a succession of chances for themselves as they tried to get back in the game.
Firstly Mead found herself with an excellent chance one-on-one with Telford but her shot went agonisingly wide, before Sarah McFadden had a chance to head home from a Greenwell free-kick but she couldn’t direct it on target.
Joice then forced a save from County’s number one, before finding herself with another opportunity from a pullback from Mead, but the striker couldn’t quite connect with it.
However, the persistence of the Lady Black Cats eventually paid off after 74 minutes when defender Tori Williams headed home another Greenwell set piece to score her first goal for the club.
Unfortuantely for Sunderland the damage had been done in the first half, and County held firm for all three points.
The result means that Notts jump to third in the table, keeping pace with the front-runners, whilst Sunderland slip to fifth.
