City hit six in plate smashing

Hull City Ladies comfortably dispatched league rivals FC United, in Manchester, to secure their place in the next round of the FAWNL Plate. A stunner from Lynskey, a Hope Knight hattrick and a goal a piece from Ackroyd and Hunt rounded off the scoring

Midway through the first half, as plenty of attacking intent threatened to boil in to frustration, Helen Lynskey unleashed a Lynskey (yes this is an adjective too now), cutting in from the left and letting fly from 35 yards

Knight, introduced on 35 minutes for the injured Brookes, then made it two – capitalising on the second ball from a freekick, following a powerful Tanser header

Moments later Knight made it three. Thompson powered away down the right again, and her drive across was met at the back post for simple finish

After the break Knight completed her hattrick. A strong City press resulted in the ball ending up at the feet of Knight in the box who, rather haphazardly, finished in to the bottom corner

Aggressive defending won the ball back from an attack from the hosts, and a ruthless counter ended with Ackroyd running through from a weighted Thompson pass. A touch and calm finish in to the far post secured her third goal in the last 4 games.

FC probed for something back from the game, and it nearly came after a brief mix up in the back line. The United forward raced through beating the onrushing Wattam on the edge, but before a strike could be made Dawson arrived perfectly to whisk the ball away to safety

Late on Hunt finalised the scoring for her first goal for the club. The play recycled and built up on the right with Tanser setting the ball back in well to Hunt who adjusted and applied the finish high from just outside the area

Chris Hames post game comments

“I’m obviously happy with that one, and how we’ve gone about todays game plan. It was a different challenge to recent weeks, but these are often even tougher games to get performance from so to do that and to do it to a standard was very good.

The fight to keep going, to want more goals and importantly to keep the clean sheet late on, is great to see

The last two weeks now have seen us make a number of changes between squads, with the amazing caveat of keeping performance levels the same. To have that flexibility and confidence is great – it makes my life difficult going in to next week, and the weeks after, but that is how it should be

We have played some excellent football and look forward to taking this game on in to the next few weeks, and to keep growing as a team”

City are back in action on Sunday 5th November at the Easy Buy stadium, Barton