Before the match, Phoebie Poole was a beacon of certainty. She would find the back of the net.
It was not an outrageous or even bold claim from the 18-year-old Cardiff City starlet. She had scored nine goals in the league heading into Sunday’s South Wales derby. It had been her brace which inflicted a first and only league defeat this season on defending champions Swansea City.
Phoebie Poole scores goals. And Cardiff City have been winning games. The facts held an air of inevitability about them on Sunday afternoon.
But for all the chatter of power shifts and nouveau title coups in the Adran Premier, there will always be something to be said about history, that elusive, ethereal quality of a team that can feel, at times, like a cheat code.
It is not, it should be said, a cheat code. That would reduce what Swansea did at the Swansea.com Stadium to a chimerical whim, a genie’s blithe hand swish on the second go. Swansea’s 1-1 draw with league leaders and title favourites Cardiff was one fashioned out of grit, composure and almost a decade's experience of being in these high-pressurised positions and emerging on the right side of affairs.
It is the margin that, for now, sees Cardiff City’s credentials for a title-clinching (potentially treble-clutching) season put on momentary hold and Swansea, despite being knocked out of both the FAW Cup and Adran Trophy in their respective rounds of 16 and suffering a stuttering start to the season, holding onto a sliver of a chance of retaining a fourth successive league title.
On a microlevel, the result cranks up the heat in an already titillating title race. Cardiff’s five-point cushion at the top of the table means Swansea will not only have to perform to near perfection for the remainder of the season (beginning with a tough task against Pontypridd) but bank on a still unbeaten Cardiff fumbling somewhere, somehow.
The aesthetic prospect of watching a traditional league behemoth potentially fall from its perch is undeniably tantalising, but Swansea have stubbornly come to prove such an indulgence won’t come as easily as many might have begun to let themselves think. They are currently the chasers in a league they have long existed solely as the chased, but they are six-time league champions and European regulars for a reason.
“From our perspective, we know there is always a target on our backs,” said Swansea head coach Ceri Phillips after the match. “Teams are always trying to make life hard for us, everyone wants to take a scalp off us. And whether we’re at the top of the league or chasing after points, all we can do is win games of football so very little changes in that respect. All we can do is keep competing for games. This group is hard-nosed and all they want to do is take to the pitch and put in a performance. They’re hardworking, experienced and we’re in a good moment right now after the lessons we've learnt this season."
“We’re going to feel pressure every now and again but I think pressure is good,” added Swansea’s Jess Williams. “It’s not good stepping out on a pitch every Sunday thinking you’re going to win. Now we have teams right behind us and one right in front so we’re going to keep stepping out onto the pitch and doing what we can to get three points.”
On a macrolevel, they are the slim edges for which this league, for so long a two-horse race between Cardiff Met and Swansea, has been crying out. That a clash with Pontypridd can be viewed through the prism of tough and potentially title-deciding is testament in itself. A distant fifth-place team last season is now bidding to gate-crash the top three and dictate fates.
Sunday’s derby felt like a microcosm of the league’s growth. A derby always promises to bring its fair share of drama and tension, but at the Swansea.com Stadium, there was a deeper dimension to it all due to the tightness of the table, a derby stoked with that little bit more jeopardy.
The league’s two best sides probed and harried each other, the first half an exasperating exercise in how to cancel each other out but the second a more breathless series of attacks and counters which sent the 1,376 in attendance, quelled largely in the bitter cold, into varying degrees of paroxysms.
A fierce and welcomed physicality underpinned the full match. The atmosphere of this South Wales derby differed markedly from its male iteration, where fans are bussed to and from the opposition stadium in necessary attempts to mitigate flare-ups and opportunities for violence. Such mitigation plans are, delightfully, expendable for the women’s game but make no mistake, even without the violent vicissitudes, a gurgling invective underlay the match and Swansea’s Katy Hosford could only be so surprised when Cardiff’s Seren Watkins took out her ankles before the 15-minute mark. Cardiff’s Zoe Atkins had gone down within the first 60 seconds. Throughout the match, the favour was returned more than once from both sides.
In fact, Hosford’s second-half goal came, almost serendipitously so, because she had been taken out in the Cardiff half by Watkins and left to writhe on the grass in pain as the Bluebirds pushed forward and the game continued. Had the Swansea forward not been the latest victim of a hardknock tackle, perhaps she might not have been in the perfect position to latch onto a ball over the top from Stacey John-Davis and fire low and hard past Ceryn Chamberlain in goal.
Such are the margins, and in a match between the league’s top two sides the margins felt the inevitable place for the match to be settled.
Thus, in true style, Poole pulled one back as Swansea failed to capitalise on their lead. A curling effort from well outside the area which left Swans keeper Claire Skinner pawing at the sky as she tumbled backwards into her net showcased Cardiff’s ability to bounce back from a deficit, the first time they had found themselves in such a position all season.
“You’re going to get tested in this league if you look at the results across the board," said Cardiff’s Ffion Price. "Any team can win on any day, so it shows our character as a team to come back and get the point. You can’t get too complacent in this league. We’re just taking every game as it comes. We’re not looking at the end of the season, and I don’t think Swansea are either. Today showed that. It’s anybody’s in that league and we just want to keep fighting.”
The sentiment is on brand for a derby: scrappy, frayed, thoroughly engrossing affairs with that necessary sprinkling of quality amid a final 10 minutes of utter turmoil.
But it is one that also importantly offers a suggestion of the league beginning to take shape and crystallise. Cardiff are a gamely reflection of what the league is bidding to become, but Swansea provide a timely reminder of what the league has always been. Who will emerge on top at the season’s end, however, remains to be seen.
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