THE Urunga Raiders have done North Coast Football proud winning the Women’s State Community Plate at the Women’s State Cup in Newcastle.

The Raiders were amongst the top teams at the annual Women’s State Cup, which featured teams from across Northern NSW including semi-professional sides from the National Premier League (NPL) Women’s Northern NSW competition.

The Raiders started their State Cup campaign in fine fashion with a 7-0 win against Dudley Redhead.

Urunga continued their dominant form with an 11-0 win against Nelson Bay in their second game of the tournament.

The Raiders had their only loss of the tournament in their third match, going down 4-0 to NPL Women’s side Adamstown.

The Raiders last pool game saw them have a 1-0 victory against NPL Women’s ladder leaders Warners Bay.

They qualified for the Community Plate final with a 3-0 victory against the Kempsey Saints.

The Urunga Raiders would win the Women’s State Community Plate in dominant style with a 4-0 victory against Cooks Hill.

Raiders coach Trevor Martin said winning the Community Plate meant a lot to a club which had seen recent success in North Coast competition.

“It’s going to sit at the top of the trophy cabinet, due to the large pool of teams and higher level of competition,” he said.

“From a club perspective it shows where sitting at a very high level.

“When we lost to Adamstown, they tipped us to win the Community Plate and said we would be competitive against the top five sides in the NPL Women’s, which was a big compliment.”

The proud coach said his side’s best performance came in their 1-0 victory against powerhouse side Warners Bay.

“They are actually leading the NPL Women’s, and they applied a lot more defensive pressure than we are used to, as we don’t normally have to deal with continual pressure in the Coastal League,” he said.

“It was extra intensity and pressure which our players coped with well and they rose to the occasion.”

The Urunga Raiders headed into the State Cup having won all their games in the current Coastal League One Women season.

By Aiden BURGESS