Hartlepool United Women were less than 10 minutes away from picking up a point at high-fliers i2i International Soccer Academy on Sunday afternoon.

Gareth Horwood’s side were holding the third-placed side at 0-0 until Danielle Nanga scored the only goal of the game on 82 minutes.

Pools face another tough assignment on Sunday against leaders Norton & Stockton, but their confidence will have been strengthened by the most recent display.

“That was my fourth game with the team,” said head coach Horwood.

“I would say that was our most complete performance in terms of the players knowing their roles and responsibilities within the team as to what we want to achieve and that’s to avoid relegation.

“We played a very strong i2i Academy and caused a lot of problems for them.

“We sat a bit deeper than we normally would and made it really hard for them to play through us.

“It looked like it might have proved the perfect game-plan but for a lapse in concentration towards the end of the game.

“We are where we are at this moment in time, but we know what we need to work on.

“We know who our strengths are, we just need to put it all together into our remaining fixtures and hopefully we manage to pick up more wins than losses

“The players we have in our squad are more than capable of doing so.”

Pools hope to have Charlie Geary fit for this weekend after the defender came off injured on Sunday.

Defender Chelsea Basnett was player of the match while Zara Johnson was the opposition’s pick as best player.