Standy in here

Natasha Dowie can’t hide her excitement. She is exhausted, but cannot keep the wonder from her voice. On Monday, the 21-year-old striker scored a goal in the last minute of extra time which won Everton a first FA Women’s cup in the club’s history – and time inflicted the first cup-final defeat on reigning champions Arsenal. And after a night of celebrating she still cannot believe her luck. “It’s like a dream. As soon as I connected with it [the ball] I knew it was going in. I just ran into the crowd and hugged some random boy – I don’t even know if he was a supporter.” The rest of the team were, of course equally ecstatic at the win. “We didn’t even shower,” Dowie laughs, “we just went straight out in our tracksuits into Liverpool. I was still wearing my flip flops. I must have got in about four o’clock this morning, so I’m struggling a bit, but it’s worth it.”

The only cloud marring the win, was the fact that on the day her family and friends were cheering her victory, a more famous Dowie – her uncle Hull manager Iain – was watching his team drop from the Premier League. “It’s a shame because he’s a terrific guy,” she says. “But he’s done his best in Hull it’s probably not worked out the way he wanted it to, but he will kick on and do well wherever he goes. “And she says, he was still one of the first to congratulate her after the game – after getting home in time to catch her winning goal. “He texted me and rung me to tell me how proud he was. He didn’t talk about his own game he was more focused on me and how proud he was of me which was lovely.”

Now she says, she is just pleased that playing for Everton means she is closer to the former striker, who lives in Bolton, and who has been a “massive influence” on her. “I always ask his advice when I see him,” she says. “I was quite young when he played, but I watched tapes of him and he was a terrific striker.”

It’s the second time Dowie’s professional path has crossed her uncle’s. In 2006 (CHECK) she played at Charlton Athletics Ladies while Iain Dowie coached the men’s side. Yet hearing her talk about holding down a full time job coaching at Stevenage Borough football club’s academy, getting lifts from her father and “scraping for pennies”, it’s obvious her lifestyle cannot compare with players involved in the men’s Premier League. Does the difference annoy her? “It is frustrating when you see what kind of money the men are on a week,” she agrees. “They train two hours a day and we are training probably more than they do. We are all holding down full time jobs. It’s very tiring, I’m not going to lie. Mo [Everton coach Mo Marley] helps out with travelling expenses, but we don’t get paid to play so it is tough. But days like yesterday (Monday) make you realise why you play the sport. “

But she hopes the new Women’s Super League due to be launched in 2011, will helps change things. “I’m very excited. Hopefully more people will come and watch us play, and if we get paid we might have more time to train. It’ll be more competitive and it might even attract foreign players.” And she says the fact more girls than ever are taking up the sport should also help. “When I was at school I was only girl playing, but now it’s 50 50. The boys didn’t even like me playing with them in the playground. When I was 14 we were in a 5-a-side tournament and our team got through to the final. I scored most of the goal but the boys complained so I wasn’t allowed to play in the final. I wasn’t the most confident kid when I was younger and I found it quite hard but I loved playing football so any chance I had I would play.”

For now though her mind is on one thing – the Premier League title. On Thursday Everton will play Leeds and on Sunday they will face Arsenal again. “I’m getting alot of attention people wanting to know me now! It’s nice and I’m going to make the most of it as we are back in the League on Thursday so I am going to enjoy it while I can. We have three games in less than a week so it’s back to business.”

Women’s footballWomenIain DowieEvertonArsenalHull Cityguardian.co.uk

The youthful zest of Dan Gosling and Jack Rodwell’s that did for Manchester United suggests Everton’s outlook might be rosier than that of their neighbours

Upwardly mobile Scottish manager establishing a reputation as skilled team builder sends on two youngsters to defeat big-name opponent. Remind you of anyone? David Moyes, a mini Sir Alex Ferguson, lost Wayne Rooney to Manchester United but can still pull a wizard from an academy.

First Dan Gosling, then Jack Rodwell: Moyes reached into Everton’s own heritage of home cultivation to inflict a sixth Premier League defeat on United. This, on a day when the barnstorming Rooney seemed temporarily to have run out of gas. On the ground where he burst out of Croxteth as a pugnacious 16-year-old with hellfire eyes, Rooney surrendered the limelight for an afternoon to Gosling, 20, and Rodwell, an 18-year-old from the golfing town of Birkdale who looks a certainty to wear full England colours.

Gosling’s tap-in was a routine finish after a piercing first-half drive from Diniyar Bilyaletdinov had nullified Dimitar Berbatov’s opener for the guests. But Rodwell subverted that United trademark, the audacity of youth, to gather the ball 30 yards out and set off on a diagonal goal-scoring trot that was redolent of another England striker and boyhood Everton fan now in United’s ranks.

To compare Rodwell’s fourth goal in blue to Michael Owen’s against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup would be to invite the attentions of the hyperbole police. Yet the late teenage years confer a free-spiritedness that older players know only from their scrapbooks.

Rodwell, a rangy, elegant, athletic midfielder who is tipped by some to end up as a centre-back, might have had consolidation on his mind as Everton led the English champions by Gosling’s goal with only a minute left of regular time. But football’s brightest boys don’t think that way. They aim not to close games down but to change their outcomes. So Rodwell ran at another highly-regarded youngster – Jonny Evans – befuddling the United defender with the angle of his run. He then fired right-to-left past Edwin van der Sar to put the game beyond United’s scampering reach.

In not much more than a month Everton have conquered Manchester City, Chelsea, Sporting Lisbon and now United. No wonder Moyes said: “Everton as a football club is going places.” Most impressive is his talent for blending home-developed colts with cast-offs from bigger clubs while also taking calculated gambles on foreign talent.

Their starting line-up included three mainstays who had fallen fractionally below United’s higher standards or, in Louis Saha’s case, had become too infirm to persevere with. Saha, who scored both in last week’s 2-1 win over Chelsea, has menaced centre-halves every time he has shown up fit. Ask Evans and Wes Brown, United’s second-choice pairing in the absence of Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand. Tim Howard and Phil Neville are the other United discards who have flourished at Goodison Park.

Excursions into the foreign talent market usually come off for Moyes. Bilyaletdinov applies his ability patchily but is blessed with creativity and struck an exquisite equaliser that made a statue of Van der Sar. Landon Donovan, David Beckham’s colleague at Los Angeles’ Home Depot Centre, has taken to Premier League combat with great verve. “Landon said he had the flu. I told him – people from Los Angeles don’t get flu,” Moyes said. Donovan sprinted around demonically without calling once for a hankie.

But as clubs strive to survive the economic winter there is no greater pleasure than finding a match-winner among the fresh faces of the academy. Gosling (technically a Plymouth Argyle graduate) and Rodwell came on for Bilyaletdinov and Pienaar respectively and injected the extra energy needed to counteract the arrivals of Paul Scholes for Berbatov and Gabriel Obertan for Park Ji-sung, whose industry disguised his innocuousness.

“We knew Dan Gosling’s got a goal in him and Jack was making up for a small mistake he made in mid-week,” Moyes said. The Everton manager thinks the club’s best young hope since Rooney is still too raw to be effective as a holding midfielder: “I think for now he’s better doing what he did today and breaking on. His size says he must be a defensive midfielder but what he did today is what he is. He’s got good composure and technique but there are other things he needs to add to his game.”

Lurking in that assessment might be discouragement for potential predators, United included. It would be depressing for Everton’s supporters to imagine Old Trafford taking Rooney and Rodwell while Howard and a fragile Saha come the other way. Losing Rooney, an inevitability given Everton’s inability to match United’s rates of pay, was bound to make Moyes more wary of over-promoting the club’s own local discoveries.

Whatever the stresses of talent-retention, this is an impressive Everton side who can also call on Tim Cahill, Marouane Fellaini and Phil Jagielka. There is a debate to be had now about which side of Stanley Park is the rosier. Liverpool have more assets but much greater debt. Everton have stability and evolutionary force. And they have Moyes.

Premier LeagueEvertonDavid MoyesPaul Haywardguardian.co.uk