PHIL PARKINSON’S Reds didn’t play last Saturday, but it was far from a relaxing weekend off!

Instead, we saw the women’s team continue an incredibly galling start of the season.

The performances have been better than our results, and while you can draw some succour from that, it’s a dangerous habit which needs to be broken before we got drawn into a scrap at the bottom end of the table.

The loss to Barry Town United didn’t break that sequence; quite the opposite as it was the most frustrating game of all so far this season, and that’s saying something!

We had the vast majority of the play, but simply couldn’t turn chances into goals.

Barry improved on the break in the second half, and carved out a couple of excellent chances which Wrexham keeper Lizzie Craven (pictured right) did brilliantly to repel. One save she made in the first minute after the break was simply breath-taking.

There were three goalmouth scrambles from well-delivered Lili Jones corners and if you don’t watch the women’s games, I promise you that Lili is as great with the ball as she is on Welcome to Wrexham.

The last of those scrambles was a remarkable affair, as the ball remained in the six-yard box for what seemed to be an eternity. First Nat Clark had a short cleared off the line, then Keren Allen’s follow-up took a deflection before being blocked on the line, the ball coming to rest temptingly close to the goal line, but Barry’s goalkeeper managed to smother it before Liv Fuller could tap it into the empty net.

Why is that ironic? Because a couple of minutes later, Barry delivered a similar corner and Carra Jones’ clearance off the line struck an attacking player on the back of the head as she twisted to try and avoid it hitting her and spiralled into the top corner.

That unfortunate goal came at the end of a disastrous couple of minutes for us which turned the game. Erin Lovett had just come on as a substitute, but was sent off after her first involvement in the game.

Frustration piled on frustration. The circumstances around this galling match added to the bitterness of defeat.

This wasn’t the first time we’ve played well and lost this season, in fact it was the third time in five games!

It feels particularly odd to reflect on the start of our season, as we’ve been putting in admirable performances but find ourselves well adrift of where we wish to be.

Home defeats to Cardiff and Swansea are perhaps not much to worry about, especially as we were the better side against Cardiff, and had excellent spells against Swansea. We could easily have won those matches.

The only poor performance we’ve put in this season was at Briton Ferry, who showed what they can do this weekend with an admirable draw at Cardiff.

That’s the other element of frustration which comes from Sunday’s match. On a remarkable day, the big two suffered.

How annoying that, when the domination of the big two appears to be broken, we’ve not been able to put ourselves into a position where we can challenge them.

Yet, as I said before, you can’t really point the finger at a downturn in performances. Against both Cardiff and Swansea we came as close as we ever have to beating them, and in terms of quality of passing and coherence the Barry performance was our best of the season.

It’s just not dropping for us at the moment, and we seem to have been blunted going forwards. Five games, five goals. We need to improve that.

Don’t write us off. This team has spirit aplenty and hopefully this is the point where our season can really get going. We have a cup tie coming up this weekend against a lower division team which we would hope to build some confidence against. Then we have a run of fixtures which look a little kinder, a fascinating derby against TNS notwithstanding.

We can build from here, and our performances suggest we’re in a false league position.

However, we have to accept that, with the points not stacking up, our immediate target is getting into the top half of the table when the league splits in February rather than tilting at the vulnerable big two.