That’s it for tonight’s coverage. Sarah Rendell was at St Mary’s for us, so please read her report and chat about the game below the line. Thanks for your company and emails - goodnight!
The Northern Ireland manager Kenny Shiels’ reaction
“We were nervous in the first 20-25 minutes. They’ve got the two best strikers in the world, yet we drew the last hour of the game. The scoreline is hard to take because I thought we did better than that. But when you think about their quality… we’re three years into this program, and it’s going to take ten years to get us into the top 20 in Europe.
“We have to get real and understand that it’s an emerging game in Northern Ireland – we’ve created a monster because we’ve grown too quick and we’re playing against teams of this ilk. It’s tough. But we matched them for the last hour. I felt we did a lot of good stuff, and that gives us encouragement. The girls were superb and gave everything for the country.
“We’re learning all the time and you can see what we got from that game tonight. We started to believe a bit more as the game matured. These experiences are brilliant for them, especially the younger ones. It will help them, and they will help the growth of the game.”
