Dan McNamara was pleased with his Wolves Women's side’s performance as they beat Halifax 3-0 in the final game of the FA WNL season.
The result matched that of Burnley, who pipped the Old Gold to the title by just a point. This means Wolves will face Plymouth Argyle in a playoff match, with the winner promoted to WSL 2.
McNamara touched on the performance, the season as a whole and how difficult it is to accrue so many points and not win the league.
On the performance
“We’ve got to be really proud of the girls. Second place in this league again, and for the gap to be 18 or 19 points [to third place], that’s no mean feat in a 22-game season.
“I’m delighted for the fans that we've got to put on a good show today. I thought the girls played some really good stuff. We felt we really let them down last week for various reasons.
“So hopefully off the back of that, now we can get a decent crowd that'll follow us to Burton next week because we'll need it, we'll definitely need it.
“I've said it for a long time, I think this club deserves to be playing WSL 2 [football]. We've got an opportunity to do so and if you had offered us that back in July, I think you'd have certainly taken it.”
On the season as a whole
“Listen, you turn up here this morning with hope and as much as I've told the girls to be really proud of their efforts, it’s still disappointing, and to get to 61 points is unbelievable from the players. 20 wins out of 22 - it wins leagues anywhere else in the world, but you've got to congratulate Burnley.”
“They’ve managed to nick it by a point and we've got to go again. It's been a long, long season and I think this is probably the hardest one to take.
“Everyone will know why I'm saying that's the hardest one to take because I think we deserved a little bit more and luck hasn't gone our way, but ultimately, the league table doesn't lie and we miss out again.
“But we can't take anything but pride away from the players. The way they've represented the club again, [I] talked about it in the pre-match, we didn’t have a team nine months ago. So to be stood here on the final day of the season and of course push a full-time Burnley yet again all the way to the wire is phenomenal.
“So it's not downbeat, we've got another week's training now, we get to extend the season and that is a huge game now next Monday.”
On how difficult it is not to win the league with the points tally Wolves have
“The stats don't lie. To win 20 out of 22 league games and not win a title, you can feel a little bit hard done by.
“But they're the standards of tier three nowadays. I'm just really proud of the girls. They will go to work tomorrow, and then they'll work Tuesday, and then they'll come in and start preparing for Plymouth.
“So you can't underestimate what they do year on year. You're just hoping for that little bit of luck, that decision to maybe go our way, but it hasn't.”