Footballer Georgia Culpitt scored a great goal at the weekend - hours after completing a gruelling half-marathon.

Culpitt, who’d been celebrating her 31st birthday on Saturday night, travelled to London the following morning for the Royal Parks race.

After finishing in 2hr01min03sec, she jumped straight on a train to Maidstone for a local derby against Tonbridge Angels.

Not only did she find the energy to play, the winger also opened the scoring with a top-corner cracker in a 5-1 victory at the Gallagher Stadium.

Culpitt, who joined the Stones from Dartford in the summer, said: “I woke up on Sunday thinking, ‘I’m not doing this’ and it was one of my friends, Annie, who plays on the team, she said, ‘No, go and do the run, you’ll regret it if you don’t’, so I ended up doing both.

“I said to myself, ‘I’ll see how I feel after doing the run’ but I’m very competitive so I had every intention of playing and I’m so glad I did.

“To win 5-1 against the top of the league and score a goal like that, I was very happy, especially as it’s well known I’m not very good at shooting.

“It’s been a running joke that I don’t have much confidence in shooting and I miss very open, clear shots and score really hard goals, and that’s what happened.”

School teacher Culpitt took up running during the Covid pandemic, with a half-marathon best of 1:48.

She was cheered on in London by team-mates including Annie White, who also scored against Tonbridge.

They made it back for the game, with Culpitt given the nod to start after a chat with manager Tori Campbell.

“We were running quite late,” said Culpitt.

“We had a meet time of 1.45pm and we got in just before 2pm, but it was literally finish the race, get on a train and get straight to Maidstone.

“They called me into the office when I got there and I thought, ‘This is so official, they’re going to tell me I can’t play’.

“They asked, ‘How are your legs feeling?’ and I was thinking, ‘I would play unless my legs were falling off’ so my legs were fine.

“I came off on about 70 minutes. Someone gave me a long ball to run after and at that point I could feel my legs going.

“I used to play centre-mid, so that’s a constant pace, but playing on the wing, the sprints are a whole other level.

“I got home, sat down and thought, ‘What on earth has happened today, because that was unreal’.”

Maidstone are up to fourth in the Southern East Counties Women’s Premier Division after beating Tonbridge.

Sarah White’s hat-trick added to the Cuplitt and White goals for a 5-0 half-time lead, with Grace Mayhead scoring a late reply.

It was the Stones’ third win in four games after a tough start to the season while the new-look team settled down.

The club are keen to push women’s football and Culpitt is enjoying life at the Gallagher after eight seasons with hometown team Dartford.

“I love it, that’s exactly what women’s football needs,” said Culpitt.

“Even having a commentator at games, for example, is perfect because it’s just promoting the game so much more.

“We’re pretty much a brand-new team and we were getting frustrated with ourselves because we couldn’t win a game.

“But we were all saying to each other, ‘We need to keep going’ and when we beat Tunbridge Wells Foresters, we were all in shock at how well we played. It just clicked from there.

“Realistically, if we could finish in the top three, I think that would be unreal because there’s some very strong teams in there but we’ve shown we can do it.”

Maidstone are off to Hartsdown Park to face Margate this Sunday (3pm).