Leyton Orient Women

3 September 2026

• Gizmo's FA Cup Preview
• League and cup round-up
• Sunday's Live-Text show
• Bits and Bobs

Gizmo's preview
Orient vs Milton Keynes Irish

Cheshunt - Sept 6, 2026

📷 Ben James

This week Leyton Orient enter the first qualifying round of the FA Cup. After last week’s natives versus invading colonial power, this week is a reprise of the theme, but with Orient as the colonialists. As an aside, who knew there was a strong Irish community in Milton Keynes? The club was formed in 2020 by amalgamating three local teams, of which the oldest was Buckingham Town/MK Robins, the most successful was MK Irish Vets and Unite MK was the third pillar. No idea when they started up the women’s team.

📷 Duncan Jack

The women caned localish rivals Brackley Town 11-0 in the preliminary round. Apparently, they attracted a crowd of over 120 for this fixture, which is very good going, if true! They play in Tier 7 in the Northampton Women and Girls League which doesn’t start until second week in September. However, most of this team played last year in Tier 6 for New Bradwell St Peter FC in Division 1 of the East Midlands Regional League, which they won by a point. Their top scorers were Cara Brooker (twenty-two in twenty) and Sapphire Rohan with seventeen (on loan from Middle Earth). They are supported by Rachael St John Mosse, who is also known for her futsal skills. There are family connections as well with Lily and Mollie Alderson joined by Charlotte and Samantha Jones.

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Leyton Orient women come into this match in good form, having dispatched AFC Welwyn last week 5-1. Freya Faulkner will no doubt be annoyed at having conceded her first goal this season, but she has been in good form. Elissa Stonebrook and Gracie Hickman in front of her have been very reliable and Stef Paci has been driving the team forward from midfield as well as contributing an entertaining Instagram account. Up front Amy Yeldham has been going well while Dani Hindley and Shannon Wason netted their first for the club last week. Erin Cheyne, Sam Read, Beth Brogan and Kaylee Shurety have been ever presents.

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Milton Keynes Irish are not a team to be under-estimated, and they may bring some supporters with them to Cheshunt. If they do, and they are truly Irish, we may get a rendition of Fields of Athenry. It’s an FA Cup game, which always gets the juices flowing, between two attacking teams so this should be an exciting match. Being match sharp should be an important advantage for Orient.

Fixtures round-up

We try to have a look around at the teams in our league and any other related news of interest. Here are Sunday's fixtures concerning teams in our division and others located nearby.

Eastern Region WFL Division 1 (South)

Just the one league game on Sunday

Southend Utd have three points from their opening two league games, Wormley lost both of theirs and have been knocked out of the Women's FA Cup in the earlier Preliminary round. This game will provide an opportunity for Wormley to get some confidence with a much needed win. Southend are renown for giving nothing away without a tough battle.

Women's FA Cup - 1st qualifying round

There has already been a preliminary round of the women's FA Cup, it's purpose was to ensure the following rounds have the right number of teams left thus avoiding the need to have byes. Teams from the Regional Leagues at Tier 6 (that's us) and the top of the County leagues at Tier 7 (that was us last year) start the ball rolling. There are well over 100 games to be played in this round, they come from all over England although are divided up into geographical areas to avoid bankrupting everyone with massive travel costs.
So it is that we will play a team from Milton Keynes. In the later rounds, the regional tier 5 clubs and the National League teams (Tiers 3 and 4) join the fray to be followed by the professionals from the Women's Super leagues (Tiers 1 and 2).

We've cherry picked a few games here which involve teams from our division or are our near-ish neighbours. We like to keep an eye on the fortunes of our local competition. Clubs in our league are marked with an *.

We are particularly interested to see how last weeks' opponents AFC Welwyn fare against our local rivals Clapton CSC. We've had to look up the leagues at Clapton ever since our team was re-formed in 2020/21. Now we're equals at Tier 6, perhaps we can meet in the next round?

Sunday's LIVE-TEXT show

As normal, we'll be presenting our live text coverage of the match against MK Irish. Ace correspondents Larry Peterson and Ben James are booked in to provide unsurpassed coverage of the game. Their updates appear right here on our website so you won't need to sign up the X, Instagram, facebook or anything else. You won't need to refresh the page either, it will update iself automatically every 60 seconds whether or not there has been a new entry. Finally, we won't be bugging you with adverts, there are no cookies, no trackers, no sponsors.... just live coverage, we leave nothing on your device nor do we download anything about you. Just relax and enjoy the game.

Check back to LOFCwomen.com on saturday or Sunday for a direct link to the Live Text show.

Bits and Bobs

A LOFCwomen.com welcome to Aleena Anwar who has appeared on the club's registered players' list. We look forward to her taking the field in the Leyton Orient colours.

The home league match against Colchester Utd which was to be this Sunday has now been re-scheduled to be played on 28th February 2027. If we do well in the cup competitions, this will happen on more occasions.

Having beaten AFC Welwyn in the first round, our next round of the ERWFL League Cup will be played on 27th September 2026, a home tie against Premier division outfit (Tier 5) Harpenden Town.

📷 Ben James