Spurs were beaten in the cup by Charlton Athletic

Tottenham Hotspur Ladies captain Jenna Schillaci says the disappointment of the Capital Women’s Cup slipping through their grasp will serve as motivation heading into their remaining four games.

Wendy Martin headed the Lilywhites in front, only for Charley Clifford and Kit Graham to strike ensuring the trophy remained with holders Charlton Athletic – and Schillaci is aware there’s a lot of importance now on how the The Lilwhites tackle the feeling which is “quite unknown to us”.

She said: “Charlton were the better team tonight so full credit to them. We just couldn’t get the ball down and play, they stopped us from playing our style of football that we’ve had success with all season. It’s important now how we bounce back from it, because obviously these feelings we haven’t really felt before this season. It’s about how we react from it now – sticking together and moving forward.

“Everyone’s obviously devastated, we want to win everything. We have a winning mentality within the squad and everyone cares so much – we are like a family. It’s hard but we have to pick each other up, regroup and just support each other. Every single one of us will look at our own performances and come back stronger.

“It has been a bit of a whirlwind of a season. We’ve just been on this massive high where we’ve just week in week out been putting in performances, we know teams have been wanting to beat us and we have kept our standards really high. We were always going to lose eventually and then it kind of took a bit of pressure off us once we had been beaten on Sunday. There’s no excuses tonight, we’ll go away and be harsh on ourselves and hopefully get something positive out of it.”

Spurs and The Addicks are now at one apiece with Karen Hills’ side having retained the Boux Avenue (Ryman) Women’s Cup earlier this month.

And they vie on May 7 for the FA Women’s Premier League Cup, before Spurs play Northern Division Champions, Blackburn Rovers, in the National play-off final for promotion to the Women’s Super League 2 on May 28.

With huge implications attached to the matches coming up, Schillaci is adamant that togetherness the squad possess will drive them forward.

She added: “We have great memories of the National cup from last season. That feeling I think will be enough to get us motivated and back on track, because we 100% want to go out there and win that again. And then we have the play-offs at the end of May which has been our priority all season – so a lot of really important games coming up. We have a great coaching staff, we’ll all work together and get ready for Cardiff on Sunday. We’ve won the league so now it’ll be more about using it as a confidence builder after the last two results, trying to get back to playing our football and what we do best.”