View From The Field: Ward’s Words (Helen Ward column)

Helen Ward calls the FA Cup final the pinnacle of the season and writes as someone who has been through three of them: a substitute’s twenty-five minutes in a 2-0 Arsenal win in 2009, a frustrating watching brief as Arsenal lost to Everton in extra time a year later, and a 2012 final for Chelsea in which she scored, then lost on penalties, a defeat she says she is still not over. Her advice is to enjoy it while treating it as any other game. She turns to Wales’s World Cup qualifying group, happy enough with three eastern European trips and relishing the short one over the bridge to England, then explains that she is expecting her second child and training through it, with Russia in October as her target.