Anna Larkins felt Norwich City's players were "all on different pages" as they were held to a 1-1 draw by Women's National League Division One South East strugglers Haywards Heath Town.

The West Sussex outfit will be relegated at the end of this season and had mustered only four points from their 19 league games prior to hosting the Canaries, so the result was certainly a surprising one.

City put six goals past the Bluebells when the sides faced off in Norfolk earlier in the campaign but it took them 72 minutes to break the deadlock on this occasion, with Ellie Smith providing a smart finish. However, they failed to add to their advantage and were made to pay two minutes from time when Storm Bailey equalised.

After the match, City captain Larkins was asked whether the team had perhaps allowed some complacency to creep in.

"I think in the back of people's heads, that is always there, that we're playing bottom of the league and we should win this game," she said. 

"But we've had plenty of conversations in the week building up to this, and loads of conversations today about how we can't go into it expecting to have won it already.

"So I do feel like we knew we had to put the effort in, just, for some reason, we were all on different pages. We weren't pulling together in the right ways, and the effort that we were putting in was in the wrong areas."

With interim boss Scott Emmerson away on annual leave, assistant coach Ethan Scott took charge of the Canaries from the dugout, and thought their performance was below-par.

"We struggled to connect today," he said. "Over the last two games, we've been excellent with the football, we've moved it well, we've moved it with two touches and we've moved it quickly.

"For the first half hour out there today, we defaulted to this strange way of not finding each other's feet and we were making loose five-yard passes.

"When you come to a place like this, you've got to expect a battle. We knew if we played our game, and played our two-touch rhythm, then we would've been fine, but we allowed it to turn into that physical battle.

"I think the key word I used a minute ago (with the players) was disappointing. That's the best way to sum it up."

Larkins agreed with Scott's assessment of the draw, but felt City did improve somewhat after a poor opening period.

She said: "We knew that we had a lot to do, and we knew where we wanted to make amends and how to get forward and make better decisions.

"I think we did do that in the second half, just not near enough to where we would've liked it to have been. 

"We did have a few chances that we were unfortunate not to take, and maybe in another game they would have gone our way, but I think ultimately, we didn't create enough."

Having dropped points to the division's bottom club, City's hopes of promotion are virtually over, as AFC Wimbledon now hold a nine-point lead at the top. But Scott has insisted that the Canaries will keep pushing until the end of the season.

He explained: "It's not like our players, or our group, or the club to pack it in just because we haven't quite achieved one goal.

"There's still three games of football that we want to win. There'll be 250-plus people at The Nest next week that want to see us win, so if we just fold because one result's happened, then who are we?

"There's still plenty to play for. We're in a County Cup final which is really exciting, and there's three league games left to try and be in that squad or the XI, so the girls have got a lot to fight for still."

Norwich City (3-4-2-1): Quantrill; Larkins (c), Strauss, Parker (Shaw 84); Kennard, Knights, Hailes (Morran 62), Tomlinson (Flye 50); Smith, Lawrence (Symonds 59); Snelling. Unused sub: Pernet.