Kate Longhurst equaled the Barclays Women’s Super League career appearance record on Saturday evening.
The 33-year-old came off the bench against Manchester United for her 177th appearance in the top flight of women’s football, equaling the record set by former teammate and Hammers captain, Gilly Flaherty and current Spurs defender Kerys Harrop.
Longhurst would have certainly wanted to have done it on a night where she could also celebrate a positive result – as the Hammers lost 4-0 to the Red Devils at Old Trafford.
After a positive first 55 minutes which saw Paul Konchesky team go toe-to-toe with United, who are challenging for the WSL title this season and ended Saturday evening top of the table.
Hawa Cissoko felled Alessia Russo in the area, which allowed for United Captain Katie Zelem to step up and open the scoring in front of a nearly 28,000 strong crowd.
Lucía García then came off the bench and converted United’s second when Ella Toone found the Spanish forward in behind and she calmly slotted the ball beyond Mackenze Arnold. Hayley Ladd scored a third when she converted Ona Batlle’s cross, and García made it a brace before the end when she tucked home a rebound after Arnold had initially done well to keep out Martha Thomas’ effort.
Longhurst reflected on her longevity in the game, as well as the performance and result at the full-time whistle.
Thankfully, I’ve been able to stay fit and healthy throughout most of my career.
That’s the secret really to being able to equal the record – I’ve had a little bit of luck along the away too. I’ve been adaptable, taken on new positions which has helped me stay in the team.
The professional side of me has always taken care of making sure that I’m eating properly and recovering well after training and matches, but my body is definitely getting older, and I can feel that during day-to-day bits. But you get through those because of the love for playing.
Achieving this with West Ham was something that didn’t look possible five or so years ago.
The Club didn’t have a professional team back then, but now that I’ve been able to come here and achieve this with the Club that I love is absolutely amazing.
I want to thank all of the players that I’ve played with over the years for their support in helping me get to this stage of my career.
We are going through a difficult spell at the moment.
But I’ve been with a lot of clubs where you go through these periods and I think the key is to remain calm. It’s about making sure we continue to keep our standards up, do the right things and that we’re holding ourselves accountable.
As a squad, we’ve had meetings and we’re trying to turn our form around, but at the moment something’s just lacking. We’re not taking our chances and that’s why we’re falling off a little bit.
That can happen in football, so it’s about how we conduct ourselves and try and pick ourselves back up for another game.
It’s hard when you’re not winning because confidence can drop.
I think it’s just those little moments where we’re switching off or not taking a change. We have to stick together, nobody is turning on each other and we all want to get out of this rut.
Everyone in our dressing room is there for one another – we want to regroup and turn things around, starting with Liverpool next weekend.
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