The final Continental Tyres Cup game saw the Wildcats end the campaign winless
Durham Women were beaten in their final Continental Tyres Cup match 2-0 by Everton Ladies.
In what would be both teams last match in the competition, the Wildcats were looking for redemption following their 6-1 defeat by the Blue Girls in the league the previous Sunday.
Manager Lee Sanders tried a new formation, for containment, and it worked in the first half, as they went in goalless at half-time, but when they looked to get something from the game, they conceded twice to end the group winless.
The first half saw the Wildcats have the best of the chances, with Beth Hepple forcing a fine save from Kirstie Levell, before Nicki Gears coming the closest, hitting the post within minutes of each other.
Emily Hollinshead almost got an early goal in the second half for the visitors, but Anna Moorhouse tipped her strike onto the post.
The first goal came after 62 minutes, Kelly Jones rifling into the top corner before the hosts lost captain Sarah Wilson to injury after 70 minutes.
Her replacement, Meg Lawson, had a curling effort cleared off the line by Michelle Hinnigan with 10 minutes left, but Lyndsay Johnson made sure of victory in stoppage time.
Wildcats forward Gears was buoyed by the performance, especially in the first half, and rued missed chances.
She said: “We went into this game really wanting a result to prove ourselves.
“We played them a couple of weeks ago and didn’t get the result that we wanted and we just wanted to go out with a bang in the Continental Cup.
“We changed our formation to start with to try and counteract their strongest player that we thought and we did really well.
“We kept them to 0-0 at half-time and we were really pleased with ourselves and I just think that when we changed back to our normal formation we were just really unlucky to concede the two goals that we did.
“We had a lot of chances, we could have scored, but we didn’t take them today.
“We were a lot stronger, we worked a lot harder for each other as well, not just as individuals. I thought we played a lot better as a team.
“Like I say, we were just unlucky and we should have scored a couple of chances.”