Mistakes by West Ham United Ladies were ‘punished’ by C&K Basildon in the Irons’ 7-3 defeat, according to manager Greg de Carnys.
Three goals in the opening 11 minutes of Sunday’s contest at Rush Green – and five before half-time – put Basildon on the way to victory against the Hammers.
West Ham tried to fight back through goals from Molly Peters, Ellie Zoepfl and Rosie Kmita but conceded twice more in the second period as well in a disappointing result for the home side.
De Carnys has pointed to his team’s poor start to the match as the catalyst for the heavy defeat and believes individual mistakes were pounced upon by Basildon.
C&K Basildon punished us. They punished us every time we made a silly mistake. It's disappointing.
Greg de Carnys
“We didn’t start well enough,” De Carnys told whufc.com. “We can’t defend the manner in which we started the game. There were individual errors and a lack of urgency, and C&K Basildon punished us for it.
“I feel like they did that all afternoon; they punished us every time we made a silly mistake, and there were a few of them today. It’s disappointing.
“I felt like we’d been training well. We prepared the team properly but unfortunately, especially in the first 25 minutes, we weren’t at the races. It wasn’t good enough.”
Prior to Sunday’s match the Ladies had been without a match for two weeks, due to a last-minute fixture change – a scenario that De Carnys had confessed to being a bit concerned about before playing C&K Basildon.
The coach believes, having seen his side lose in the manner they did, that the unexpected break did have a negative impact on his team.
De Carnys added: “In hindsight, we’d have to say that break potentially had an impact.
“I said before the game that I felt we had worked well over the last two weeks and I didn’t sense any complacency in the team. When the game kicked off though there were certainly people that weren’t at it. We’ve got to make sure we don’t let that happen again.”
Positives were admittedly difficult for De Carnys to find following the loss but the manager was happy to see his side score three times and compete better in the second period.
“I think if you’re looking for positives, we scored three and we’ve had a lot of chances and could’ve scored more. I think it was slightly better in the second half, although the damage was already done by that stage.
“Thankfully we don’t have to look at that sort of score very often and we shouldn’t be allowing it to happen. Hopefully it’s a one-off.”