In an exciting encounter in East London yesterday, Shannon Cooke’s West Ham were able to fight back to secure their first point of the season and in the process deny Liverpool all three points at Chigwell Construction Stadium. The Halfway Line were able to speak with Cooke after an eventful afternoon which culminated in the 1-1 draw. Shannon Cooke played on the right of a back three and did well to nullify the threat of Liverpool’s impressive wing play on her side.
When asked for her assessment of her side’s performance Cooke reflected “Happy for sure as a team to pick up the first point of the season. I think its good that we did not go inside ourselves after going 1-0 down, I think it was seven minutes in. We were defending for a large portion of the game, I’m proud of the team for, like I say, not going inside ourselves and conceding again but continuing to fight till the end.” Cooke continued “I think we actually flipped it and probably scored with seven minutes left of the game. I think just an assessment: proud of the team to fight to get the point.”
As the game reached its conclusion West Ham and Liverpool both pushed for a winner and Cooke felt West Ham were in the ascendency but caused their own issues early in the match. When asked whether she felt West Ham had the momentum to push for a winner Cooke noted “Yeah for sure I feel like sometimes that’s how football goes it starts a bit slow and picks up towards the end. I think that is something we need to work on as a team, to start and finish the fight. So obviously if we had started the fight better we wouldn’t have conceded that goal which would not have put the pressure on us for 80 minutes but that’s all part of the growing of a season and hopefully we can do that (start better) next week.”
After a disappointing opening day defeat to Manchester United, West Ham now have their first point on the board. The Irons centre back was audibly pleased with the result as she expressed “A point is always important, I mean there was a point in the game where we were going to leave with none. Three is always the goal but to leave with one when we was going to leave with none is definitely definitely an achievement.”
West Ham had eleven new arrivals this summer, but Cooke was quick to downplay any suggestion they were taking time to settle when remarking “I think as the season goes on every single team regardless of whether you’ve got new players or not it takes games to get into the flow. We’ve had a good pre-season, we played some challenging games we’ve got some great team cohesion off the field and I think that does show on the pitch especially today with the fight together until the end.”
When asked what a successful season would look like for West Ham, Cooke reflected “just staying together, we want to obviously climb the table as high as we can go, we want to score goals, we want to keep clean sheets and ultimately that’s what wins games”
Next up in the Barclays Women’s Super League for the Hammers is the daunting task of a trip to Manchester to face Manchester City, though Cooke was bullish about her sides chances when expressing “[the team are] looking forward to it. You want to play the best to be the best, obviously they’re going to be a good team we know what to expect. We play them every year twice, if not three times in the cup. So yeah we know what to expect.” Cooke once again noted the importance that the ‘fight’ her side has will be to get a result when expressing “We have got to go in with confidence. I think we can take the confidence from the fight in today’s game and push forward into next week.”
Before they face Manchester City, Cooke’s West Ham United face a struggling Championship side in Portsmouth in the League Cup on Wednesday evening at the Chigwell Construction Stadium.
