Andy Butler was pleased to be able to give young players the opportunity to shine in Sunday’s game at Sporting Khalsa.
Ellie Mortimer came in for her debut in goal for the Belles after signing on Friday, whilst Lily Harrison, an RTC graduate, also played the last 15 minutes of the game, and Butler was pleased to see the 16-year-olds slot in and grab their chance.
“I thought young Ellie did really well in goal, she came into the side and did very well, it’s all about learning for her, her confidence grew throughout the game and she made some good saves which helped us out a lot,” he said.
“Lily came on late on as well so it’s good for the future of the Belles to see they have had that experience, everyone will get a chance if they’re good enough, there’s no issues from me I won’t have a problem with putting a young player in.
“That’s pleasing for me that we have girls playing that are really young and getting these learning experiences, and again that can only help the team in the future, the RTC is there to develop these good players and the pathway is there for them.”
The Belles suffered defeat for the first time in the league under Butler at the Aspray Arena, with Sporting Khalsa coming from behind to win 2-1, but the manager felt there were a lot of positives to take away and build from in the future.
Butler added: “I feel like we deserved more than what we got from the game, it was just a couple of errors that have cost us but I can’t be too hard on the players, I think their application and attitude was spot on.
“It’s something for me to learn from, something for us all to look back at and review, see what we could have done better, I’m not going to put it all on the girls because I thought they applied themselves really well.
“I thought if anything we just lacked that final pass at times, we lacked that ruthlessness about us that we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks, I’ll take responsibility for it as well but we move on .”