On this day: Schillaci on the 'worst five minutes' to secure promotion to WSL
Wed 01 May 2024, 10:00|
Tottenham Hotspur
On this day, five years ago, we secured promotion to the Barclays Women’s Super League for the first time in our history after a 1-1 draw with Aston Villa in the FA Women’s Championship.
Captaining the side at the time was Jenna Schillaci, who admitted that the final five minutes of our stalemate with Villa in May, 2019, were the ‘worst’ she was involved in during her illustrious playing career.
A legend of our Women’s First Team having first joined us at the age of 16 before going onto spend 12 years in total in lilywhite, including captaining the side during our extraordinary journey to the top of the Women’s game, Jenna was one of the stars of SPURSPLAY’s documentary back in November, 2022, that tells the story of the incredible rise of our Women’s team.
During the production of Broxbourne and Beyond at the time, the former defender spoke about the tense final five minutes of play in the penultimate game of the 2018/19 season as we ultimately clinched an historic promotion to the WSL.
Taking on Villa at the Trevor Brown Memorial Ground in Sutton Coldfield on matchday 19 of 20, we needed to take just a point from the game to secure a promotion spot but, having been pegged back in the match with Amy West cancelling out Jess Naz’s early opener, we faced a nervy end to the clash, most pointedly an agonising last few minutes as the Villans threw everything at us.
“This (game), we all felt the nerves,” Jenna reflected on that historic fixture. “We had a big crowd that had travelled. We could hear them chanting (throughout).
“I remember the last five minutes of that match were the worst five minutes (of football) I’ve ever been involved in. It was awful. They put so much pressure on us. They threw everything at us. We were literally defending for our lives.”
