Argyle Women were defeated 2-0 by Watford on Sunday, in their second game of the FAWNL Southern Premier Division season.
Madison Perry’s brace, with goals either side of half-time, secured the Hornets three points in a game that saw both teams create chances in front of goal, but Watford emerging as the more clinical of the sides.
Following the result, Head Coach Marie Hourihan explained that the outcome was not what was wanted, but that positive thoughts and progression can still be made from the performance.
“You never want to lose games,” Hourihan told Argyle TV. “We came in today to be on the front foot and really go after Watford, and I think in the first 20 minutes they were on top. We were slightly off with our distances and how we wanted to be in our press; credit to them. They managed to get in some tricky situations, which we had to deal with, and we had to ride the storm a little bit for that period.
“We switched off in one moment. They got a wide free-kick, and we've allowed them to hit the switch, followed by a good delivery into the box - and they've scored. At this level now, and if we want to be in that top end of the league, they're the moments where we have to be switched on. We've got to be prepared and ready because we know what's going to be coming. We weren't, and they punished us.
“I felt that in the final 20 minutes of the first half, we started to get a bit of rhythm to our play, settled into it more, got our distances in the press much better and created two or three extremely good opportunities where we have to score. That ultimately has been the difference today, for me.
“We need to credit Watford. They had their moments, and were clinical and that's the reason why they're in the position that they're in. We’ve got to take a lot of learning from that, prepare and now look ahead to Billericay Town next weekend.”
Hourihan credited team performance and togetherness following Thursday night’s game against Marine Academy Plymouth, which saw Lulu Jarvis suffer a serious leg injury, but also reminded all of how early in the season the team are, with a long campaign ahead.
She said: “We’ve got to take some of the positives out of it. We are two months into a journey. We came to the home of Watford and took them on, head-on, in a very competitive game, I think anybody here watching would've seen that, so we must take the learnings from that.
“When we play them again in the New Year, at Home Park, we will take that forward into that game. From my perspective, I think that's important that we understand where we've come from and we understand the steps that we've made. Now, we've got to react and get the performance level back up to get points on the board.
“If you take into account the week that we've had as a squad, with what happened on Thursday night, we’ve had 48-72 hours to come into a game of this magnitude and turn our attention fully to this.
“I think on reflection, we've done very well to come in and perform at the level that we have, but if we want to achieve what we want to, we know that we've got to come into these games and have our approach spot on. We can’t allow teams like Watford to have opportunities to be ruthless.”
