Double incentive to hard FA Cup tie for Rotherham United Women

They taken on free-scoring Thornaby Women, from the North East, in the third qualifying round at Roundwood (2pm).

Should they win it offers a chance to boost their existing prize pot to £4,000, a healthy amount for a club of Rotherham’s size.

Speaking to the Advertiser this week, manager Rob Hilton said: ”We got quite a bit of money for getting through the second qualifying round, which was great, and we want to get as far as we can in this competition and make ourselves more financially stable.

"It’s is not cheap running a football club. Training facilities, especially through the winter, they’re not cheap. Then you have the cost of kit and tracksuits and all that that comes with it.”

The Millers are running into a Thornaby team which is full of goals.

They have a lot of players who got moved on from Newcastle United when it got a cash injection from new Saudi owners, plus others who filtered through from Middlesbrough FC.

"Thornaby haven’t been beating teams. They’ve been destroying teams,” said Hilton.

"They beat Hartlepool 12-0 recently and there’s been 9-0s and 10-0s.

"We are going to set ourselves up slightly differently for this one.

"We don’t want to be conceding early and we don’t want to be chasing shadows. We need to be compact and deal with all the aerial threats and use our pace at the right times.

"It's going to be a test, there’s no doubt about that.”

Rotherham are also in good form, bagging 13 goals in their last two games, albeit against lower opposition.

They won 8-2 at Dronfield Town last Sunday in the League Cup.

There were hat-tricks for Jess Jones and Alesha Gale and Delia Hurdiss scored the other two.

"It’s starting to click,” added Hilton.

"We were always creating chances. It was just about converting those chances and now we are starting to find a bit of composure in front of goal.”