Plumptre’s Excitement For WSL Challenge
- Ashleigh Plumptre speaks to LCFC TV after reporting back to Belvoir Drive on Wednesday
- LCFC Women's stars were in after the summer break for pre-season testing
- The 2020/21 Players' Player of the Season believes she has plenty of development to come
- The Foxes will contest a campaign in the Barclays FA Women's Super League for the first time in 2021/22
Meeting back up with her team-mates at Belvoir Drive for the first time on Wednesday, the team’s thoughts are fully focused on writing the next chapter in the history of LCFC Women as a full-time, professional outfit.
And as manager Jonathan Morgan continues to shape the squad for the campaign to come, the challenge of competing in the Barclays FA Women’s Super League for the first time is something that Plumptre is looking forward to.
“During the summer, especially when I’m doing my own training, I’m thinking that we’re now preparing for something else,” the centre-back told LCFC TV.
“But to think that we’ve gone through the whole of last season and with everything that happened with COVID-19, we’ve just had to adapt in so many ways, changing training facilities.
“We came out at the end of the season and to achieve what we did, not just with the league, but the pinnacle with Man United (in the FA Cup), it was huge for us.
“It’s hard to settle back in straight away but then you have to think about what next - and that’s WSL. You have time to sit back and relax and think about it a little, but now we’ve got to get back on to the next thing that we’re trying to achieve.”
Playing at the highest level for her hometown team is without doubt a dream come true for the 23-year-old, but she is determined not to rest on winning the FA Women’s Championship.
And walking out onto the pitch for the first time in the top-flight is a moment Plumptre, who was a regular last season, playing 25 times, is certainly excited about.
She continued: “I don’t think I can really picture what it will be like, as soon as we enter into the WSL, it’s something that at my age I didn’t really expect to be able to do. At 23 I think I’ve still got a lot of years of development still in me.
“To think that I can represent this badge and Leicester, the team that I grew up supporting, and it’s like my home, at the pinnacle of women’s football in this country is unbelievable.
“It’s about being confident, competitive, but realistic at the same time. I think for us, we know how well we did last season with everything we had to deal with, the pressure we had on our backs as the professional team, which isn’t very common in the Championship.
“We were able to come out on top. We have a few perks that other teams don’t have, and we had to win the majority of games and the pressure was on us to win the league from the very start. We did really well to harness that and use it in the right way when we played.
“This season it’s a little bit different, we have less pressure on us and I think we can play a bit more freely and I think that nobody should be coming in here playing a bit uptight because we don’t have the same pressure on us.
“There is a little bit of pressure because of the setup that we have, we’re very lucky, but we don’t feel the pressure that we felt last season.
“We need to use the competitiveness we had last season to try and win most games and as a defender, you just don’t want to concede and that won’t change from the Championship to WSL.”
Expectations for the 2020/21 second tier champions will be, naturally, slightly lower than the previous campaign, Plumptre admits, but that does not mean they cannot target another successful season.
“We have to remember that we are the team that are coming up, we’ve never been at this level before,” the former Leicester Academy player added.
“We just need to enjoy it and make sure that, as Leicester City, we are confident and representing the badge the way that the Club always tries to do.
“The same way the men’s team do it, that’s the philosophy we’re going to take into the WSL.
“We’re not fearful of any team, we’ll respect them for sure, but it’s just being here, enjoying it and then putting everything into pre-season so we’re best prepared for the start of the season.
“It’s almost reiterating to everyone the mentality that this Club holds isn’t just within the women’s team, you see it in the men’s team and within the whole Club.
“That’s what we need to embody as we go into the WSL, making sure that we compete, that we leave everything out there.
“And even things that people can’t see, in terms of how we prep our bodies and things, it will be especially important if we are going to be playing more games and our loading will increase a little bit.”