Damon Lathrope praised his “flying” defenders for keeping another clean sheet as Watford Women emulated their male counterparts with a 4-0 victory to remain top of the Women’s National League Southern Premier Division standings.

After taking a while to get into their stride against London Bees at The Hive, the Golden Girls took the lead when Flo Fyfe latched onto Gemma Davison’s long pass to lift the ball over Bees keeper Mia North.

The visitors established daylight early in the second half when Poppy Wilson fired home, before Davison and Helen Ward got in on the scoring act to complete the victory.

Although Watford recorded another comfortable win on an excellent day for the club after the Hornets’ 4-0 drubbing of Luton Town in the Championship, head coach Lathrope was keen to praise the efforts of his defenders.

“The clean sheets are massive for us,” he told the club website. “I always say it, the goals will get the headlines, but the defenders are flying at the moment.

"The amount of goals we’ve conceded lately are very, very few. We’re doing the right things consistently to stop them from going in.”

Watford were unable to continue their recent trend of scoring early in games, but Lathrope wasn’t too concerned by their slow start to the contest.

“I think they took us by surprise a little bit with their formation,” he said. “We’ve come to sort of expect teams to make it difficult for us, and they put a lot of bodies behind the ball.

“Half-time was very key, and fair play to the players they took on the information excellently. They upped the intensity, and I think the second-half performance was up there with the best this season, so I’m really pleased.”

Watford opened the scoring after 31 minutes when Fyfe latched onto Davison’s long ball and cleverly dinked it over North.

Davison was again the provider two minutes after the restart when her pass found Wilson, who cut in on her right foot before firing home her second goal in as many games.

The favour was returned with 15 minutes remaining when Wilson threaded the ball through for Davison to drill home and make it 3-0.

Ward came off the bench with 30 minutes to go to return to club action after being away on international duty with Wales and completed the scoring from the penalty spot with four minutes remaining after fellow substitute Adekite Fatuga-Dada had been pulled down in the box.