Megan Todd netted her second penalty in as many games to earn a point for City in front of a sizeable crowd, but Herdman was disappointed his team were unable to find a winning goal for the supporters in attendance.
The result means that Norwich are still looking for their first home victory of the season.
Reflecting on the match, the City boss said: “(We were) slow, kind of pedestrian. Yeah, we can look at the heat, but Cambridge got off to a good start and I think that Cambridge deserved their point today.
“I hate to say it, and that’s twice I’ve said that now. We haven’t lost, but at the same time, we know we’ve just beaten them 5-0. It’s so frustrating.
“(The) second half was better, but not our levels that we’ve shown in the last couple of weeks. We’re just struggling to get that consistency right now, and yes, we can look at the heat, but there were two teams in the heat.
“The first half was one of the poorest halves I’ve seen us do. There were a lot of positives in the second half, but what I expected, it’s so hard to say (because) it’s 30 degrees heat, I wanted more energy.”
It was only the third time that City Women have played at Carrow Road since the team became fully integrated with the Canaries in 2022. Winger Rachel Lawrence – one of seven new signings this summer – revealed she found the experience incredibly rewarding.
She said: “It was crazy. Obviously a lot of the girls did it last season as well, so this was my first time with anything like this.
“It was exciting, and amazing to see so many people.
“It’s a shame we didn’t win, but a draw, we can take it, and it was probably a deserved result to be fair.”
This was a sentiment shared by Norwich captain Anna Larkins.
“It’s always an honour, just being captain in general, walking out the team wherever we’re playing,” Larkins said.
“Obviously here it’s a lot more special, and yeah, I have immense pride to be in that position.
“Games like this are obviously fantastic for us, fantastic to play in front of those 5,000-odd fans. It’s absolutely brilliant, such (an) occasion and a celebration of women’s football almost.
“At the same time, The Nest is our fortress, and I think we’ll be looking forward to getting back there and getting the three points next week.”
Focusing on matters at The Nest is also something that Herdman is hoping City are able to do over the course of the season. While getting positive results on the pitch remains the number one priority, he also intends on ensuring that the club’s attendances continue to improve.
Herdman said: “We got 301 there (last week against London Seaward); I think we could easily be getting 500. I think once we get that consistency of bigger crowds, the girls will be used to it, and they don’t even worry about coming here.
“Some of the girls we were speaking to at the end, who the girls have signed autographs for, they were saying ‘I want to watch her, I want to be like her, I want to be in that team’.
“And parents coming up to me, going, ‘there’s your next generation of players’. That’s what we want, we want new players coming through.
“Norfolk’s a hot bed, we just need to keep them coming through so they don’t have to look away. Let’s keep them coming.”
Norwich City: Quantrill, Larkins (c), Flye, Croft (Tomlinson 46), Parker, Morran (Strauss 90+7), Knights (Shaw 46), Todd, Smith (Symonds 81), Lawrence, Snelling (Stanley 82).
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