Having struggled to reach Montenegro, Wales could only draw with opponents they were expected to beat with something to spare on a miserable evening at the Gradski Stadion.<\/p>\n
A victory would have put Wilkinson’s team in pole position to top their group, but instead they must now beat the Czechs if they are to finish first and therefore secure a more favourable route in the play-offs later this year.<\/p>\n
“I think that there’s the luck of a draw whether you finish first or second,” Wilkinson said.<\/p>\n
“Yes, you have a slightly better opportunity finishing first, but I do think momentum-wise and confidence-wise – and for the players to really recognise the growth they’ve made in the last few years – I think it’s important that we win this game.<\/p>\n
“This is a huge game and I think it’s a challenge against a team that is in almost every single category equal to us.”<\/p>\n
Wales and the Czech Republic are level on points having both won three and drawn two of their five group games to date.<\/p>\n
A Czech win in Cardiff would see them finish top, while a draw would also be good enough for Jitka Klimkova’s team because of their better goal difference.<\/p>\n
While both the Czech Republic and Wales are already certain to be in the play-offs, claiming first place would mean avoiding a League A side at the semi-final stage in October.<\/p>\n
Wilkinson says she has a fully fit squad available for the game – aside from Hayley Ladd, who was not called up in this window due to injury – with Carrie Jones and Lily Woodham both in line to reach 50 Wales caps on Tuesday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having struggled to reach Montenegro, Wales could only draw with opponents they were expected to beat with something…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-482541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}