Togetherness will make Sunderland stronger says forward Watson | OneFootball

Sunderland forward Katy Watson says that togetherness will only make the team stronger as they look to progress in this season’s Barclays WSL2.

After going close to winning promotion in 2023/2024, The Lady Black Cats finished last season in seventh position in the league table.

Going for promotion this season won’t be easy but forward Watson says that togetherness will certainly provide Sunderland with solid foundations to do well.

“The season where we almost won the league was a shock to ourselves because we weren’t going for promotion at all, it was just about finishing as high as we could,” Watson told WSL Full-Time. “When we started winning games, we just said ‘we can actually do this’. We didn’t expect to win but it just kept getting closer and closer and we missed out with a couple of games left.

“Last season, maybe we set our standards too high and expected to finish that high [again] then when we went into games against the teams below, we might have been a bit too confident, that could have been where we went wrong.

“Going into this season, the togetherness definitely helps. We are doing lots of team-bonding stuff. As teammates, getting behind each other definitely makes us stronger and will help us get good results.”

Sunderland are not only competing for promotion, they are also battling with neighbours Durham and Newcastle United for local bragging rights. Watson says that the North East competition is fierce.

She said “Every team in the North East want the bragging rights so that they can say they’re the best team. Going into games, there’s a lot of pressure. Everyone wants to win and they’ll do absolutely anything to win.”

Watson got her preparations for the new season off to the best possible start. She netted a hat-trick in Sunderland’s 4-0 pre-season friendly victory over Rangers last week. The player revealed that she was eager to get back on the pitch and scoring goals.

She said “Going into the game, I was quite nervous because it was one of the first friendlies in pre-season. We had a big build-up on running; we pretty much ran every training session, so it was just nice to finally get a game.

“It was my first start of pre-season and I just went for goal. I definitely needed it because the first few sessions of pre-season were a lot of running, not as much football, so it was nice to get on the pitch, have a ball at my feet and just do what I do.”

Sunderland kick-off the new Barclays WSL2 season with a fixture at Sheffield United on Friday 5 September 2025.