After picking up a hard fought draw on the opening day of the season away to Middlesbrough and then securing a fantastic win against Sunderland Ladies. The Tigresses were beaten by 1-2 Huddersfield Town Women on a wet, windy and cold Wednesday night at Haworth Park.
First team manager Adi Costello was brutally honest in his post match interview but remains optimistic for the rest of the season.
Costello said “I’m disappointed, beaten by the better team on the night, you’ve got to hold your hands up at times, Huddersfield played well, it wasn’t the case that we were unlucky we were beaten by a better side tonight, we’ll go again, just spoken to the girls in the dressing room and what’s your feeling and it’s disappointment, I said why, they said it’s because we didn’t play.
They didn’t play like they played against Sunderland or Boro, we did not play, we got the ball and panicked and hoofed it, instead of getting it under control and playing to our strengths and the girls know that and we go again for Sunday.”
The Tigresses scored the game’s opening goal as Katie Thompson dispatched her penalty. Huddersfield equalised from Laura Elford’s header, four minutes from half time and they completed the comeback when Elford scored her second of the evening 10 minutes after half-time.
The girls are still heading in the right direction according to Costello and he was pleased that The Tigresses never gave up in a match which saw awful weather conditions.
“This time last year, if we was beaten 2-1 that would have ended up 5-1 because we would have given up but now we’re fighting, hat’s off to the girls, we’re still in it and crikey we’ve got four points we only had six last year and we’re only three games in and we’ve got a lot of games to go, we keep going,” said Costello.
It was fantastic to see a good crowd at Haworth Park despite horrible conditions as The Tigresses had chances throughout the match but ultimately wasn’t clinical enough.
“We were too deep defending, our midfield was on the defenders toes. Once we won the ball we couldn’t get out, we were booting it long and expecting miracles to happen, we had a shot which just went wide it could have been 1-1 or 2-2 but we didn’t deserve it I’ll be honest, if we scored last few minutes, I’ll be jumping up and down, throwing my cap and skidding across the grass but we didn’t deserve it we were beaten by the better team.
We go again, that’s the beauty of football if you don’t lose you cannot learn from it. So we have to learn from tonight. They mentioned it before I did and that’s they did not play,” said Costello.
Hull City Ladies now turn their attention to Fylde Women on Sunday afternoon, aiming to bounce back. A long trip is expected and recovery is key Costello said.
“Recovery is the big thing now, we’ve played two games in three days, the girls need to rest, recover, fuel and get themselves ready for Sunday and we get set and go again Sunday, we’ve been to Fylde before, it’s a long way and if we play like we can, we’ll do okay.
A lot of the teams had written us off before the season started, being the team who’s going to get spanked every week, but so far we’ve conceded four goals, scored four goals and we’re doing all right. Last season we lost 9-1 away to Sunderland first game of the season and by the fifth game we conceded 16 goals so we just keep going,” said Costello.
*Written By Alex Robinson
**Photo By Kevin Greene
