Sutton gave London & South East Regional League leaders Fulham a stern test this afternoon and although ending up on the wrong end of the scoreline gave new manager Lucy Clark plenty of encouragement for the remainder of the season.
In a home game that was switched to Fulham's Motspur Park ground, Sutton gave a performance much improved on recent weeks, without the injured Fern Colepio and Ella Meehan and with Chloe Francis suspended having been shown a red card after the final whistle in last week's game against Actonians.
Fulham led 2-0 at half time, a deflected cross being headed over Zoe McNulty for the opener, but U's were unhappy about the second goal, feeling that McNulty was impeded by a player in an offside position as she tried to prevent a Fulham player shooting in after she had made a good initial save.
Sutton came out strongly in the second half and were rewarded with the best goal of the game as Toni-Anne Bussey's header allowed Caitlin Savage to run at the home defence before playing a perfect pass across to Jaz Backhurst, whose shot (above) was too strong for the Fulham goalkeeper.
Fulham restored their two goal lead three minutes later with a close range header from a corner, and although they hit the post with a long range effort near the end they were made to work all the way by U's before being able to claim the points.
Defender Justine Buckmire made her debut after her move from Actonians, putting in several well judged tackles to thwart Fulham attacks.
Sutton: Z McNulty, M South, S Modak, J Buckmire, H Talbot-Smith, A Measures, H Thomas, M South, C Savage, L Malcolm, T Bussey, J Backhurst. Subs A Cutler, A Tyrer, M Frances-Creaser, E Spear.
Congratulations to Lily Dent, a member of our team last season, who made her WSL debut for Brighton on Saturday, coming on as a substitute in the televised game against Chelsea.
The next game for the first team is in a fortnight's time away to Millwall Lionesses.
A Skye Bailey goal gave our development side a 1-0 win against Reigate and moved us up to second in the Surrey Division One table in the South East Counties League. There is no game next week. The reserves had no game today but play away to AFC Crawley Reserves in the Surrey Divisional Cup next Sunday at Copthorne, kick off 1.30pm.