PHIL PARKINSON’S side have completed a magnificent season, now it’s time to win the Welsh Cup.

The women’s team have an opportunity to end a magnificent season in style, and in the process add to the club’s glorious list of upsets.

You might wonder whether the team that finished third in the league beating the champions would be an upset. After all, the men went into Saturday’s game against league winners Stockport in third place, didn’t they?

This is different, and that’s why Sunday’s match at Newport is so exciting. Steve Dale’s side are on a journey, and a first win over Cardiff will be an important milestone.

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have made it clear that they have great ambitions for the side, and the strides we’ve made are enormous. Cardiff remains the first great obstacle we must overcome.

0-3, 1-3, 0-3, 1-6, 1-5. Sounds like a helpline, but it’s actually the rather ugly sequence of results we’ve suffered against Cardiff City this season. Those results fall far short of telling the whole story though.

Before the Stockport game, I was chatting about the challenge of the cup final to Gemma Owen, guru, legend, grand poobah and all-round boss of the women’s set-up. I was thrilled to find that she agrees totally with me: we’ve suffered all those heavy defeats, but not one of them was as comprehensive a defeat as the scoreline suggested.

We’ve consistently done well in the first half, as Steve Dale’s carefully-planned pressing disrupts the Cardiff back three as they look to pass out from the back.

The pattern of recent matches has been Cardiff struggling to find their rhythm and control possession as they’re forced into errors in their own half.

Some of those mistakes simply lead to them ceding possession by thumping the ball clear; others lead to a turnover in their half which presents an opportunity to score.

We need to be ruthless when those situations arise, as Cardiff tend to react well to our tactical surprises and improve decisively as the game goes on.

Our box midfield has clicked in the second phase, allowing us to dominate three of our four games against Aberystwyth Town and Swansea City in the championship stage of the season. It’s given us flexibility in the press, solidity in the core of our side, and has allowed us to enjoy dominant phases of play in our games against Cardiff too.

There are other reasons to be optimistic, even when we think of our worst moments against City. Our most recent clash, at Cardiff City Stadium, ended in a heavy defeat, but Carra Jones’ late pummelling of City’s goal with long range shots wasn’t just a late spasm of resistance against a side which knew it had already won. It was an adventurous player who had spotted a flaw in their armour and was setting about looking to exploit it.

That exploratory bombardment of long range shots yielded one goal and a few near misses: let’s see if her approach on Sunday is influenced by what she’s learned.

Logic tells me we have a shot: we completely dominated Swansea City the last time we played them, and were denied victory against them on the first day of the season by a 96th minute equaliser.

That would be the Swansea side which has beaten Cardiff twice this season. We clearly can’t be too far off their level, then.

We’ll need to reach new levels of focus though. We have a strong defence, with outstanding individuals, which unfortunately has made mistakes which Cardiff have been able to exploit ruthlessly.

That’s why they’re the best team in the country.

We are definitely capable of defending more carefully against them, and a couple of equalisers in recent games against The Bluebirds shows our character: going behind isn’t enough to faze us. We have the character to fight back.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Cardiff are overwhelming favourites for a reason, and if I was a betting man, I’d pile my cash on them.

However, we’ve got a fighting chance, indeed a much better chance than our results against The Bluebirds would suggest.

Come to think of it, we’re a massively unfavoured underdog with five defeats against our opponents, none of which were by a single goal margin. The odds are long, but we’ve got a chance.

It’s in this club’s DNA to cause upsets. Maybe if I was a betting man, a Wrexham win would be exactly the gamble I’d take!