Havant & Waterlooville emerged 5-2 winners, but two of their goals came in injury time at the end of the game, and GFC Women’s coach Cayden Tardif admitted that the three-goal margin of defeat was ‘frustrating’.
‘It was not a 5-2 game. We were good in patches, especially in the first half,’ he said.
‘I don’t know if it’s fair to say we deserved something out of it, but I don’t think we were miles off it, and they’re a good team. They haven’t lost yet this season, so to go toe-to-toe with them isn’t a bad thing.
‘It’s just a shame the score was what it was.’
GFC Women fought back from going behind inside three minutes to lead 2-1 thanks to goals from Codie Le Flem and Amy Dallamore, but then conceded an equaliser in the dying moments of the first half which changed the complexion of the match, with Havant & Waterlooville carrying that momentum into the second period and regaining the lead quickly.
‘It’s a little bit of decision making and game management, which hopefully as we play more games we’ll get better at, and partly to do with how we were out of possession,’ Tardif said.
‘But they’re really little things, and things that we can go ahead and work on.’
However, the coach took plenty of positives from the performance.
‘It’s good to have some players coming back, like Ruby [Smith] to get more minutes today is great, which I think helps our overall improvement and performance.
‘They are getting better and they’re going to get better because they’re getting really good opportunities to play competitive matches, which, as I say all the time, we need. And it’s really, really good that we’ve got these opportunities.’
