Reading FC's women's team have enjoyed a very impressive start to the season and they are certainly enjoying life in the southern section of the FA Tesco Women's Premier League.

The Royals began their campaign with a 2-1 victory away to Portsmouth, Francesca Kirby and Danielle Puddefoot the scoring the first goals of the season.

Next up were Crystal Palace, who became the first visitors to our new Barlows Park ground in Hampshire, home of Tadley Calleva FC. We crowned our home debut with a much-deserved and hard-earned victory. Kirby was again prominent but it was Amy Shaw who stroked home the vital penalty to give us a 1-0 win.

Despite dominating the game from start to finish, it seemed as though the goal might not come our way, but the late penalty was just reward for our team's endeavour and enterprising play.

We then faced two games in quick succession; Barnet at home on Sunday 30th August and QPR away just two days later.

Barnet, one of the best teams in the league, took the lead early on but we clawed our way back with a Puddefoot equaliser.

We spurned chances to take the lead but couldn't convert and four quick-fire goals in the last 15 minutes consigned us to a disappointing 5-1 loss, our first defeat of the new campaign.

Our girls showed good resilience to quickly turn things around though and QPR were on the receiving end of a 3-1 backlash.

Reading went behind as Rangers took advantage of some slack defending and Frank Rodriguez's girls were trailing at half time despite a promising performance.

Thankfully a similar display after the break led to a superb leveller from Kelly Sims; the in-form winger danced into space just outside the area and lashed home a cracking long range effort to make it 1-1.

Natasha Caswell soon made it 2-1, profiting from some good work by Emma-Jayne Pearmine to smash the Royals into the lead with an excellent strike from distance, before Amy Shaw notched a late third from a corner to seal the victory.