Albion Women duo Ash Brown and Kate Evans were left “frustrated” after their defeat at Derby County on Sunday, believing they were worthy of at least a point from the clash.
Olivia Rabjohn’s strike looked to have been enough for a positive result against the Ewes, but the Baggies were pegged back in the second half by two goals - including one just seconds before full-time.
Despite the late below, midfielder Evans and wing-back Brown insisted they were hard done by as their unbeaten start to the FA WNL Northern Premier Division campaign came to a harsh end.
“We’re really frustrated, to be honest,” said Kate. “We felt a draw was a fair result for us, but some poor decisions at the end of the game led to them scoring late.
“It’s always tough going ahead so early in the game to maintain that. We’re disappointed that we’ve let them come back into it, we could’ve done more to secure a lead.
“We had some good opportunities and had a goal disallowed, but we’re disappointed that the ball was adjudged to have gone out of play. We had opportunities being one-on-one with the goalkeeper which we could’ve done better with.
“We need to take these lessons into our next game.”
Ash agreed, adding: “We’re all disappointed, we started the game strongly so to have the lead and then lose it’s disheartening. We were unlucky to lose and not to win in the end.
“We had the first half under control but fair play to them, they changed their shape and got better. It was something we had to figure out quite quickly.
“The changes we made made an impact but sometimes in football things don’t turn out the way you want. It was a tough one for us to take really.”
The Baggies' new system has brought a fresh role for Brown to play, which includes her having a hand in attacking patterns further up the field, a prospect she’s relishing.
“I love being involved but there’s a lot of work involved. There’s a lot of running! It’s something that I’m getting used to.
“The more we play in this shape the fitter I’ll be getting which is great. I keep putting crosses in and I’m getting forward more as we saw last week.
“Hopefully I can keep getting on the end of a couple of tap-ins. It’s obviously worked for us so far, it’s our first loss so the more we work on the shape it means we’ll get more confident.”
Both players are looking forward to welcoming Sporting Khalsa to The Hawthorns next week, which provides the perfect platform to bounce back from their defeat to Derby.
“We’re excited and we love playing at The Hawthorns,” said Evans. “We played them (Khalsa) at the end of last season as well, so we know what to expect.
“We can use the Derby defeat to go into The Hawthorns game and be better now.”
Brown added: “All of the emotion will soon come through on Tuesday when we start preparing for it.
“We’ve known about playing at The Hawthorns for a while now and we’re always looking forward to it. We get a good crowd there normally so it’ll be good to play in front of those fans again.”