\n<\/p>\n
Hannah Cain scored twice as Wales continued their positive start to Women’s World Cup qualifying with a 4-0 victory over Albania in Wrexham.<\/b><\/p>\n
Cain steered Wales in front early on before Elise Hughes’ close-range strike doubled the home side’s lead before half-time.<\/p>\n
Albania never looked like mustering a response, with any hope of a comeback wiped out early in the second period as Rhiannon Roberts headed in a third for dominant Wales.<\/p>\n
Cain then guided home her second goal of the night \u2013 and the sixth in her past four internationals \u2013 as Wales cruised to a comprehensive win.<\/p>\n
Wales’ second successive victory means they have seven points on the board at the halfway point of the group phase as they bid to reach a first Women’s World Cup.<\/p>\n
Rhian Wilkinson’s team have been knocked off top spot in Group B1 thanks to Czech Republic’s 5-0 win over Montenegro.<\/p>\n
The Czechs, who lead the way courtesy of away goals scored, are expected to be Wales’ main rivals to finish first in the group, which would mean a favourable path to the 2027 tournament in Brazil come the play-offs later this year.<\/p>\n
With the sides who are level on points separated initially by head-to-head records, it may well be that top spot will be decided when Wales host the Czech Republic in their final group game in June.<\/p>\n
Until then, the task for Wales is to simply keep pace with the Czechs, meaning their job was done at Stok Cae Ras.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Hannah Cain scored twice as Wales continued their positive start to Women’s World Cup qualifying with a 4-0 victory over Albania in Wrexham. Cain steered Wales in front early on before Elise Hughes’ close-range strike doubled the home side’s lead before half-time. Albania never looked like mustering a response, with any hope of a comeback<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}