💬 Haley McCutcheon: Pride win against Portland ‘feels like a turning point in our season’

“It was good. You can see the effort that the players have put in. We had a good chat after the Houston game about what we needed to do and bring it back to our identity and style of play. We showed today that commitment from the players, the desire and the attention to detail in sticking to the game [plan] was brilliant. You have to win the game in multiple ways and today, we saw an opportunity to soak up a little bit of pressure and be lethal in the counterattack and the goals were well taken. I am really pleased for Adriana and Messiah [Bright] to get that goal because I know she has been working hard to get it. Overall, I was really pleased with all the performances.” 

On if the previous match against Portland played any factor in tonight’s performance 

“It is massive. You look back at that game and it was due to our own downfall that we lost that game, individual mistakes. A team like Portland will punish you. We used that as fuel for the players to kind of prove people wrong, change people’s opinions. Everyone wrote us off early on the season, said we aren’t good enough. Now we are trying to change people’s perception of what this team looks like. We have got a lot of young players here, but you can see the commitment, you can see they’re all bought in and there’s a real togetherness here. Ultimately, the team won the game, because they are so tightly bonded. It was a great performance.” 

On earning three straight home victories 

“I said that at the start of the year, we have to make this stadium [Exploria Stadium] a fortress. We have to make this an environment that’s difficult to play in. With the last three games, we’ve shown that. The crowds are terrific. The crowd fully gets behind the team and they push them on. That helps having that 12th [player] in the stands and it is brilliant to have. I said at the start, we have to try our best to bring more fans into the stadium and, behind the scenes, the Club has done a terrific job of getting more fans into the stadium. Ultimately, it’s our job to put the performance together and make them want to come back. With victories against Portland and Spirit and Louisville, and even early on the season the performances were there, and then we fell a little bit short in the 95-plus minute game management. That understanding of how to see out a game might have changed the outcome of some of the earlier results, but we’re making good progress and moving forward.”