After a good pre season we came into yesterday's opening league fixture with a degree of optimism, but a disappointing performance and result proved something of an anti-climax

Preparations for the game were disrupted by the discovery that the crossbar and post in one goal had been mounted the wrong way round, and had to be lifted and turned, involving several of the squad - which overall took close to 3/4 hour. This was a distraction we could have done without and almost certainly contributed to our uncharacteristically slow and disjointed start to the game.

Hasland took full advantage and were 3-0 up by the twenty minute mark. It was always going to be uphill from that point but we did settle things down a little and Jordele pulled one back shortly afterwards to make it 3-1 at HT

Stand in 'keeper Sarah Levitt, pulled off a fine save from a penalty on the hour, but the respite was temporary as Hasland added a fourth a few minutes later, and a fifth with just over quarter of an hour to go. Jordele pulled another back to make the final score 5-2.

After building up some encouraging form in pre-season this was a disappointing result and performance. It's easy to look for reasons - or excuses - including the impact on our warm up of "postgate" but in truth we were beaten by a better team on the day and Hasland were deserved winners.

We know we can play much better than we showed yesterday and will be aiming to do just that on Sunday when we are at home to Mackworth.

We also hope for an improved performance from the City Council's Parks Department and have requested assurances that the pitch will be mowed (the grass yesterday was up to 4" long in the goalmouths!) and posts correctly mounted in time for next weekends fixtures.