After a four week break in fixtures Pride returned to League action with a first visit to Amber Valley’s new home at Derwent Meadows, Borrowash. As the name suggests, the pitch is close to the River Derwent, but a week after the latest major downpours had fortunately recovered sufficiently to be playable. Nevertheless, an area of the pitch was very boggy suppressing any bounce from balls, whilst the remainder was covered in quite long grass that held the ball up.

Pride got off to a good start, with Steph Eadon opening the scoring within 2 minutes of kick off. However, despite this, the fluid incisive passing that brought a ten game club record unbeaten run in the League (the final five games of last season and the opening five games of this season) was absent, as misplaced and blind passes, and a series of poor decisions and poor executions presented Amber Valley with gilt edged opportunities which they gleefully accepted, scoring three goals between 9 and 13 minutes in a calamitous four minutes to present Pride with an uphill task with almost 80 minutes still left to play.

To add to Pride’s woes they suffered yet another injury setback to add to an already lengthy list as Ellie Coleman hobbled off with a knee injury after 20 minutes.

The two goal cushion gave Amber Valley extra motivation and the remainder of the first half was only slightly better for Pride - in that they avoided conceding again - but struggled to string passes together and generate any real fluency to their play against dogged and determined defending. Despite this they pushed Amber Valley back and although there was no shortage of chances created, the majority of shots, although on target, were hit straight at the keeper and lacked power.

There was an improvement from Pride in the second half, although despite continuing to create good chances, as had been the case in the first half, the keeper was not really being tested by most of them, although Beth Jones had a glorious opportunity shortly after the restart, but put her shot into the side netting after rounding the keeper, and was close with a glancing header from a corner.

The breakthrough finally came on 69 minutes, when Tash Allderidge intercepted a ball out from the back and quickly played in Beth Jones and she clipped her shot over the keeper from the edge of the area.

Apart from sporadic Amber Valley counter attacks all the pressure in the second half was on the Amber Valley goal and it now went up a notch. Within minutes of the goal Beth Jones shot wide and Loren Kitching had a shot turned round the post by keeper, before on 77 minutes the scores were level. A goal kick was met by Tash Allderidge and her header found Beth Jones in the left channel, her first touch took her wide to the edge of the area but the goalkeeper was unable to hold Jones’ clipped shot.

As the game went into five minutes of added time, it appeared a point had been salvaged, but in the second minute of added time a ball out of Amber Valley’s defence was played up to the striker, who was allowed to turn and slide a pass through to her teammate who wasn’t tracked and as she turned inside running parallel to goal she was caught by Pride’s keeper Jade Howell and brought down. The resultant penalty was cooly despatched in off the post, to inflict a first defeat of the season on Pride and end a sequence of ten games unbeaten in the League.

There was no doubt about the penalty that decided the game - it was as clear cut as can be - but there were three potential penalty appeals in the first half for Pride, the strongest being for a blatant push on Loren Kitching but, at least, there was some consistency in this regard as the hosts had shouts for a couple of penalties of their own in the second half - but it appeared there was a higher threshold being applied to incidents inside the penalty area compared to elsewhere on the pitch.

All of the previous games against Amber Valley were difficult, competitive games but Pride’s first half generosity made it all the more difficult. Pride Park has always seemed to have difficulty negotiating gaps in gaps in fixtures, so after a break of four weeks it is entirely in keeping with that trend that their run ended with this fixture. Whilst there was a good reaction after the interval, and no lack of effort, a poor first half compounded by four miserable minutes and profligacy in front of goal (18 out of 25 shots on target) proved costly.

Pride return to Moorways next Sunday for the 2nd Round of the Cawarden Derbyshire County FA Women’s Cup against Borrowash Victoria (kick off is at 1.30pm).

A selection of photographs of the game, taken by Shaun Hardwick of S.H Photo, are available to view in the Media Gallery