Belles head coach Zoey Shaw is backing her side to regroup following their opening day defeat at home to Leafield Athletic on Sunday.
The Belles kicked off their FAWNL Division One Midlands campaign with a 3-0 loss to a clinical Leafield side who came to Oxford Street off the back of promotion last season, and Shaw is keen to see a quick response.
“I’m disappointed with the way we set our stall out in the first five or 10 minutes, and I’m disappointed about all the individual stuff, individual mistakes, I said to the girls at half time I understood there would be nerves but I can’t account for that,” she said.
“I always knew that nerves might play a part in the game, for a lot of them it’s their first time playing here, their first time playing together, it’s a massive weight to carry the Belles name on your shoulders, but we needed to be much better than we were.
“We’ll come in on Tuesday now and we’ll look to regroup, we’ll sit down and discuss the game, we’ll clip it and show them parts of the game, we’ll go away as coaching staff and pick it apart, and come with a plan for next week and I’m sure we’ll be ready.”
Shaw was left frustrated in defeat, with the Belles having much of the better play, creating more chances than their opposition but not finding that cutting edge in front of goal, and the head coach feels the loss will help her team identify their problems and adapt quickly.
“It’s not as though we didn’t create chances, we had plenty of shots on goal but we just couldn’t convert anything when we had the chance, we need to get our heads round this quickly now and move on to the next game,” she added.
“Take nothing away from Leafield, I thought they played really well and they took the goals brilliantly, we couldn’t track back in time for them, we had a big hole in midfield and they took advantage of that.
“Next week is a different focus for us in the fact it’s a cup game, we’ll iron out those problems early on, we want to win every game that we can, our focus is the league, but obviously we’ll prep well ahead of what is going to be another big test in Sheffield.”
The Belles return to the Keepmoat Stadium on Sunday August 25 at 2:00pm when they face Sheffield FC in the FAWNL League Cup - book your ticket now from tickets.clubdoncaster.co.uk and #BackTheBelles!