Spoils were shared in our first game of the season in the Barclays FA Women's Super League on Sunday (6 September) as we drew 1-1 with West Ham at The Hive.
An own goal from Grace Fisk, who turned in Lucy Quinn's corner, gave us the lead in the second half before Adriana Leon equalised for the Hammers in a tightly-contested London derby.
Karen Hills and Juan Amoros handed three Spurs debuts to Kerys Harrop, who started alongside Hannah Godfrey in central defence, and Rachel Williams and Alanna Kennedy came off the bench in the second half in our behind closed doors league opener.
Spurs started brightly and were unlucky not to take the lead on two occasions through Kit Graham in the first half.
The forward headed the ball goal-bound from a dangerous cross in from Siri Worm but was denied by the crossbar after 14 minutes.
Three minutes later, in typical Kit fashion, she tried her luck from distance but was denied by the woodwork once more.
At the other end of the pitch, Becky Spencer was called into action five minutes later, making a comfortable save to prevent Kenza Dali’s strike and she had to be alert once again when the West Ham midfielder fired a free-kick just wide of the goal.
Spurs broke the deadlock eight minutes into the second half. Angela Addison saw her effort on goal pushed out for a corner by West Ham’s goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold before the resulting set-piece, curled in by Quinn, was turned into the back of her own net at the near post by Fisk to give us a 1-0 advantage.
The Hammers came up with a response five minutes later when Leon charged down the left wing before cutting inside and curling a shot straight into the top-right corner past Spencer to even the score line.
Both sides continued to exchange chances as the match entered its closing stages and our defence firmly dealt with a series of free-kicks from the visitors with Spencer making a leaping save to keep out Leon before the London derby finished honours even.
Head Coach Karen Hills said: "I'm really proud of how we started the match, we came out of the blocks and stuck to our game plan. We were unfortunate with Kit hitting the crossbar twice but overall the whole team played very well in the opening 20 minutes but then the game started to settle and West Ham got into it. We're disappointed with their goal, we worked really hard to create chances and scored from a set-piece, we just got caught out at the other end of the pitch but fair play to them as it was a good finish. Obviously we're disappointed not to get the win, if we had scored those early chances then it could've been a different outcome but that's football."
