Royal Navy women positive about season ahead after draw with AFC Portchester

The Royal Navy women’s footballers have drawn their early season match at home to Hampshire club side AFC Portchester 0-0.

A wet 4G surface made for slippery conditions at HMS Temeraire and neither side could break the deadlock in the first half.

Navy coach Ben Prince-Hall said his team came out knowing the rain would not be the only challenge of the evening.

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"It's not ideal to come out on a Wednesday night with the rain, slippery surface," he said.

"This is the first time this group has got together this season, so it's a really good opportunity for us to put them together as a group and not just test them in the conditions but test them against a proven team that are playing week in, week out."

Despite the 0-0 stalemate, the coach said the side would benefit from the run-out and focus on sharpening specific areas.

"I think it showed today that the group, obviously that we're playing against, they play together week in, week out, and we definitely got some positives out there, but we've also got some really good areas to improve and looking forward to moving into the next phase of our training and putting those areas to improve really into practice," he added.

The Senior Service started the match with players such as experienced UKAF footballer Nat Bavister, but missed a number of key personnel through deployment.

Prince-Hall told BFBS Sport it presented a chance for others to step up to the mark.

"Unfortunately, it's part and parcel of being in the military that we do lose a lot of players to deployment, so we've got quite a few players to come back in, we've also got a few that are absent today – short notice through injuries sustained at the weekend – looking forward to them getting back and maintaining positives we got from tonight," he said.

"Finishing in that final third is something that we probably need to work on. I think at one point, they were queuing up to take a shot and they all looked a little bit scared, so it's definitely something we're going to take into the next element of our training."