“The big picture is more important than today’s game alone.”

That was a message from John Salomon after Watford Ladies’ first outing at Vicarage Road ended in a 4-1 defeat to Aston Villa on a day when the positives achieved by the club outweighed a negative result.

The Golden Girls got off to the ideal start when captain Megan Wynne gave them a seventh-minute lead. But the loss of influential holding midfielder Chloe Gunn to injury inside the first quarter-of-an-hour was to prove key as Villa equalised soon after, before a spell of three goals in around eight minutes effectively had the Women’s Super League 2 game won by the interval.

Despite the outcome, the majority of a record-breaking 1,102 crowd – led by Hornets fan’s group The 1881 who were in good voice throughout – stayed until the end and showed their appreciation at the final whistle.

Reflecting on the match and the occasion, Watford boss Salomon said: “Looking at today’s game on its own, the result is obviously disappointing. I thought we started the game well and losing Chloe Gunn early on was a big loss. She’s a big player in our midfield. I think it showed. It affected us in the short period until we sorted the midfield out.

“ I thought in the second half we came out stronger. We were better, more resilient, worked a lot harder and we started to make better decisions on the ball.

“It’s a shame not to get the result but the big picture, looking at where our club’s come from in the short space of time and be attracting such a big crowd, there was always a long-term strategy to today’s event, never mind so much the game, and obviously it’s a positive to have so many people here and to have such great support for the women’s team.”

Asked about the size of the crowd, Salomon responded: “I think it’s one of the highest attendances for Super League 2, but it’s certainly our highest crowd. We set a target of 1,000, we’ve done a lot of work behind the scenes to promote the game as much as possible and I think initially the players dealt with it well when they got onto the pitch.

“But it’s a new thing for them. They’ve never played here before. We’ve played in stadiums like this – last season we played at the Keepmoat (Doncaster Rovers’ ground) – so we’re starting to play in bigger grounds and get used to that.

“But to play in front of such a big crowd is a new thing for the players and I think they responded better in the second half, once they were able to get their minds focused on the game. But that’s no excuse, no excuse for the goals or anything like that.”

The Golden Girls manager continued: “I didn’t enjoy it during the game but the big picture is more important than today’s game alone. That’s always been in the back of our minds, as much as for the course of those 90 minutes that game was really important to us and we did everything. You can see from the players in the second half their reaction was really good and they came out and showed that type of resilience defensively that we want to see.

“This was a big occasion for us to promote women’s football, to put it on the map in Hertfordshire, we’re really grateful to the football club for allowing us to play the fixture here and to put Watford Ladies on the map a little bit more because we’ve been gradually building it up through the last three of four seasons. It’s a shame we didn’t get the win but the big picture is it’s a really positive day for the football club.”