Desiree Ellis believes objective achieved despite back-to-back losses in Europe

This was South Africa’s second fixture on their European tour after going down 5-0 to Denmark on Friday night in Aalborg.

The games are part of preparations for next year’s WAFCON where Banyana Banyana are the defending champions.

Ellis was excited by the performance of her players but not the result, adding that the objective for the two games were met.

"Oh definitely, I mean no one goes out into the field to lose and I think the 5-0 result is not what we planned but sometimes that happens when you don't get things rights on the field and a lot of those things we got right today," Ellis said.

"We cut out the crosses, closed the inside, forced them back into errors and we created better chances but this job is not finished yet because we still have a lot of work to do.

“This needs to be not perfected but at least can be better. It needs to improve all the time and we said we're looking for improved performances and today it's not just the score line but today was definitely an improved performance in all areas."

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England led 2-0 at the break, but the South Africans fought back in the second half with captain Thembi Kgatlana reducing the deficit with a well-taken solo goal – racing from the halfway line to hit the back of the net.

And they could have scored more had they been composed in front of goals.

"There were a lot of things that we didn't do right against Denmark because they played with overloading on the sides and switching off play and obviously the areal ability and I thought the first few minutes we gave set pieces away and they scored from one,” she added.

“The second goal, we speak about winning the second ball, winning the third ball, we didn't do that but we rectified that and we bought players on we thought could make a difference.

“We took really good chances in the first half but we also had chances in the second half and if you look at it, we had a couple of chances from open play."

Against England, Banyana Banyana made four changes, bringing on Kgatlana, Hilda Magaia, Linda Motlhalo and Sinoxolo Cesane who all missed the Denmark clash due to visa challenges.