Above: Pride Park’s Tash Allderidge in action – U10 player Edie Hill put questions to her. Photo: Shaun Hardwick.
At the end of last season, Impetus partner club Pride Park ran a competition to find their best Junior Reporters.
To enter, participants were asked to submit no more than five questions they would like to ask one of our first team players – with the winners picked out by our expert football panel, including Impetus editor Ben Gilby, Jen O’Neill the editor of She Kicks Magazine and Faye Hackwell, freelance journalist and blog writer for Her Game Too.
In the first of our winners’ interviews, Edie Hill of the u10 Lionesses put her questions to our Ladies’ team captain and record appearance maker Tash Allderidge (185 appearances and 70 goals for the first team).
Edie: What do you do to keep teammates’ spirits high after a loss?
Tash: Although a loss can be really disappointing, we try to focus on the positives to keep spirits high. You usually learn more from a loss than a win, so instead of being disappointed from a loss, we use it to learn from our mistakes and become a better team.
Edie: What keeps you playing with the first team for Pride Park?
Tash: I’ve played football for Pride Park since I was 10 years old (playing for the U11s Girls team) and continued into the Ladies team. I enjoy playing for Pride Park because we have such a friendly team environment whilst also being really competitive in the league.
Edie: The team I play for sometimes lies down together after an enjoyable game as a bit of fun, do you have any celebratory dances or motions after a goal or win?
Tash: Not really, we generally high-five or fist bump on our way back for the restart after scoring and get ready to go again – although we did go mad in one game last season when Beth Jones scored a screamer from 25 yards that went in off the crossbar – in time added on with, literally, the last kick of the game – to earn us a draw at Draycott in March. We all went mad and ran across to mob her. As soon as the ref blew for kick-off, he blew again to end the match. You might have seen the goal in the goal of the season video – if not, it’s well worth watching! -> https://www.prideparkfc.com/videos/goals-of-the-season-2223-190989.html
Edie: If you could play football in any stadium, which one would you choose?
Tash: Personally, as a Newcastle United supporter, I would love to play at St James’ Park. The atmosphere at the stadium for home Newcastle United matches is incredible so it would be an amazing experience to play there!
Edie: Pride Park play in blue, if you could re-design your kit, what colours would you choose?
Tash: Although we don’t play in it very often, I really like the colours of our away kit (Fuchsia and navy blue) so I would probably redesign our home kit in those colours.
In our next feature interview, find out what Ladies’ striker Beth Jones had to say when she was is put on the spot by Katie-Louise Smith of our u9 Pumas.
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