Charlton goalkeeper, Eartha Cumings, has revealed it was "really special" to be named the Women's Player of the Year on Sunday.
The 22-year-old Scottish International won the award with 21% of the vote playing a vital role between the sticks for Karen Hills’ Addicks during the 2021/22 campaign.
Shortly after winning the award Cumings shared her gratitude and gave a special thanks to her goalkeeping coach and to all of her Addicks teammates:
“I have got to say a big thank you to Neil Moore my goalie coach and Nat (Natalia Negri) and Soph (Sophie Hillyerd) the other goalies as well, I think we did well all of us combined.”
Cumings who recorded nine league clean sheets this season shared with a beaming smile what this award means to her: “It feels really special, obviously to know that people have voted for me to win this award it feels nice.
“I feel like it has been a positive season for us overall, and to end it here on a win and winning in the way we did it was really special.”
Upon winning the award Eartha reflected on her early stages with the club: “When I first signed here Riteesh [Mishra] who was the manager at the time, he really took a chance on me, I had not played many games in the last few years when I had signed here, and to be fair, my career probably wasn’t going anywhere fast.”
“So, the fact that he kind of like signed me and then brought me into the club and then Karen as well continued that confidence with me that really meant a lot.”
Cumings then went on to make Charlton history during the summer of 2021 as she became the first female player to sign a fully professional contract with the club: “To be the first female professional player to sign here, it is a huge club, it was really special.”
The Addicks went on a phenomenal run after the Christmas break going 882 minutes without conceding and Cumings was quick to praise the team as a whole on the achievement: “Yeah, that was brilliant, obviously going on the run that we did without conceding was fantastic and that goes down to the hard work of all of the goalies involved in the club, all the centre-halves and the whole team, it is a whole team effort.
“I think it was a really fantastic achievement.
“My favourite save was probably the one against Sheffield, because it kept the clean sheet, and it got us the point in the end.”
Eartha finally touched on the season finale which saw Karen Hills’ side come from behind to seal a 2-1 victory over Durham in front of a record crowd this season at The Valley: “The crowd was fantastic today, it was so nice to be at such an amazing arena. To have as many people as we did that was really brilliant it really added to the atmosphere.
“I felt like we were really able to kick on as a result of the kind of support and enthusiasm from the fans that encouraged us in the latter stages when Katie scored her goal, it was fantastic to play here.”