NORTHERN Ireland senior womens coach Tanya Oxtoby has appealed to fans to come out and support the team in their return game against Portugal in the Euro qualifying group campaign at Mourneview Park, Lurgan on Tuesday night (7.00pm).
Speaking after Friday’s disappointing 4-0 defeat by higher ranked Portugal in Leiria, Oxtoby urged fans: “Come down and support us. The girls need your support and encouragement to help put in a good, solid performance.”
Oxtoby insisted the fans will also see that her side are better than Friday’s 4-0 reverse might appear.
The head coach said: “Obviously people will look at the scoreline and, from our perspective, it’s frustrating because there were really, really good parts of the game where we were in it, we caused problems going the other way and we executed what we asked so there are real positives from us.
“You play a really good team like Portugal and you switch off or you make a mistake and they punish you and they’re did that effectively.
“In-game we had to tweak things and adapt things. We spoke pre-game about the fact that good teams, once you have a little bit of success, actually adapt and we had to adapt in turn to that.
“I’m ready proud of the girls. Their effort and endeavour and ability to adapt and apply what we are asking them was good for most parts.
“You are always going to get mistakes, especially as you get tired so we need to learn from those bits and we need to make sure we’re in a good position come Tuesday to put in another good performance.”
Oxtoby added: “We’ve spoken at length about the fact that we’ve got a squad in transition, we’ve got a lot of young players coming through and the some really experienced players helping guide them and I think we saw that, like Keri Halliday and Brenda McPartlan.
“We’ve got loads coming through and they’re really, really exciting and It’s a really exciting time for us as a group, but we need to continue to push and continue to learn from games like this because Portugal are a great side and we want to make sure that we are competing where they are at.”
