Rianna Dean: "We never stop going until the very end"

Sunday’s match-winner Rianna Dean praised the team’s spirit after Spurs Women had to dig deep in injury time to earn a vital win against West Ham at The Hive yesterday (12 January).

Our number nine’s dramatic late winner is the third goal she has scored against the Hammers in three appearances this season as we completed the league double over Matt Beard’s side.

Making her full debut, Emma Mitchell gave us a deserved lead at The Hive with a curling left-footed strike past Courtney Brosnan into the bottom left corner.

But after being on top and causing havoc in the Hammers' defence, there was late London derby drama when they equalised through Kenza Dali in the 90th minute, and we were punished for not converting our chances as a nervy spell of stoppage time followed.

Thankfully, Dean came to our rescue and headed in the winning goal from a flawless cross delivered in from substitute Angela Addison as The Hive erupted.

“Those injury-time winners are the ones that mean the most in some ways as it just shows how hard we work and we never stop going until the very end,” Rianna said after scoring her fourth goal of the season.

“I think we thoroughly deserved the three points and I’m buzzing that we got them in the end. I’ve always said that we are a team and I think the girls who came off the bench and the girls who went off put in a shift. I think Angela (Addison) had a big impact coming on, saw me front post and I just had to finish it and thankfully I did.”

Our first victory of the year sees us move up to fifth in the Barclays FA Women’s Super League as we put our defeat to Manchester City behind us and head into next weekend’s clash with Manchester United in high spirits.

“We lost 4-1 last week against City and we knew we had to put things right against West Ham. We knew we needed the three points and we knew what we needed to do, and I think the girls grafted, we put in the performance and we got an important win.

“It was a sloppy goal that we conceded late on and we’ll need to look back at it and see where we went wrong, but even then, I thought we looked like we still wanted it, we looked like we could still go on and win.

 “We’ve got a tough game coming up away to United and we know that’s going to be a hard battle, but if we can improve on Sunday’s performance then we should be able to go up there and give them a good game.”