Livingston Women were unable to book a place in the SWF Championship and League One Cup semi-final after suffering a 2-1 loss at home to Rossvale on Tuesday night.
Jennifer Dodds had the game’s first chance but her header went straight into the arms of Rachel Docherty in the Rossvale goal while the dangerous Lucy Brown fired across the face of goal during a slow start to the contest.
Rossvale opened the scoring on 24 minutes as Melissa Porter found the far corner with a 25-yard strike from out wide on the right that Charlotte Ferguson was unable to prevent from nestling in the back of the net.
Livi’s reply was near instant as a long free-kick played in Brown who duly teed up Dodds who found herself in acres of space. The striker composed herself before rolling the ball past Docherty.
The hosts could have got themselves in front within a minute of the second-half as Ashley Elizabeth raced through on goal but was unable to beat Docherty.
Elizabeth was involved in the match-winner on 66 minutes - but not in the way she would have liked as she was ruled to have brought down Eilidh Milligan inside the box while attempting a clearance. Lauren McCulloch duly stepped up and fired the spot-kick home.
Livingston would fling everyone forward in a bid to get back into the clash while the introduction of Gemma Mason and a change of formation provided a spark.
But they were unable to find an equaliser for a second time and bowed out of the competition.
Livingston boss Paul Jaconelli commented: “To be fair you have to give Rossvale credit because they played well.
“The penalty decision can go either way and the referee saw it in their favour.”
He added: “We created chances that we usually score and we didn’t but you get games like that. There really lies the difference in the game. I've seen Ashley score those all season and it just didn't go that way in this game. The good thing is that we’re still doing a lot of the right things.
"I think I made a mistake by not switching formations to 3-5-2 earlier but we were getting a lot of joy down the right side with Lucy. I had a feeling we were going to get something down there but it never materialised.
"When Gemma (Mason) came on we started to play a bit more like what I was looking for and Rebecca (Jaconelli) made runs in behind. We'll need to look at things after this game and assess."
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