A 6-1 defeat to Durham Women on Sunday means Spurs Ladies have suffered their second league defeat of the season and are now fourth in the table.
Both teams went into the match with only one league defeat each. A game which was set to be tough quickly turned into a dramatic one and ended with both sides playing with 10 players.
Spurs were already losing 1-0 after a goal from Emily Roberts in the opening 10 minutes. A red card for Spurs goalkeeper Chloe Morgan followed shortly after, resulting in a free kick for the visitors. Beth Hepple converted the freekick making it 2-0 to Durham and one player down for Spurs.
Two more goals for Beth Hepple and one each for Sarah Robson, Zoe Ness and Chloe Ryan completed the scoreline for Durham.
Looping
The only goal of the game for Spurs came from Angela Addison at 5-0 down, looping the ball into the top corner over Durham keeper Megan Borthwick from outside the box.
After the match Spurs manager Karen Hills shared her disappointment with the scoreline but praised her side for the effort shown for the full 90 minutes.
“We knew it was going to be a tough game. It’s always going to be uphill from the second half when you go 3-0 down, however we come out second half and then gifted them two goals in the opening three minutes, again giving us another mountain to climb.
‘Character’
“At half time we were always looking for character, always knew we were going to be up against it and it was about making sure they all stuck together and tried to pull each other through and they did and I can only take my hat off to them for that, they stuck with it for 90 minutes and caused some problems and created some opportunities.”
Sunday’s match was the start of a busy run for Hills’ side with three matches coming up over the next week and a half, including a Continental Cup game against current Super League champions Chelsea.
“This week is going to be a tough week for us, we’ve got another game on Wednesday that gives us another opportunity to try and put things right sooner rather than later so we don’t have long to dwell on it.”
Positive
The manager is looking forward to training to focus on the upcoming matches and to try and get some more positive results before the end of the year.
“We’ll go back to training this week and work hard as we always do and look to get the performance right on Wednesday, which then puts us in a really strong position and hopefully go forward onto the game against Crystal Palace with hopefully a positive result.
“Its football, teams have been here before, you win and lose games but we’ll work hard and we’ll definitely bounce back”
Spurs Ladies are back in action on Wednesday night against London Bees at The Hive Stadium.
