The Westfield W-League Newcastle Jets will return to the road this weekend to face Melbourne Victory with the venue and time to be advised due to the poor playing surface at Bob Jane Stadium.
The Westfield W-League Newcastle Jets will return to the road this weekend to face Melbourne Victory with the venue and time to be advised due to the poor playing surface at Bob Jane Stadium.
Having suffered their worst defeat of the 2009 season on Saturday in front of a home crowd at Wanderers Oval at the hands of F3 rivals, Central Coast Mariners, the Jets are out to claim their first victory of the season in Round 5.
Head Coach Wayne O-Sullivan is confident that his squad are able to learn from their errors and build on solid past performances to bring home three points.
“What we-ve tried to do is encourage (the players) to play football from the back, we are trying to build up football – that-s the way we-d like to play, it-s the way that we think the best teams in the world play.”
“It-s about that desperation in the final third so if we can add that desperation and concentration to 90 minutes, which we-ve yet to do as a team, then we will go very close,” he said.
With five Newcastle Jets players currently sitting their HSC examinations, the task of choosing Saturday-s starting line up could prove difficult as four of the five – Loren Mahoney, Kirstyn Pearce, Libby Sharpe and Emma Stewart, each study PD, Health and PE, with the exam on Friday and scheduled to finish at 5pm, just as the team is set to depart for Melbourne.
While Tara Andrews, who scored the Jets- first goal on Saturday against the Mariners, along with Hannah Brewer, will both be unavailable due to representative duties as the pair travel to Asia for the World Cup qualifiers with the Australian U17 team.
O-Sullivan is preparing to bring Harmonie Attwill and Nicole Jones into the side to play against Melbourne, as well as Renee Cartwright who signed with the Jets just today.
Despite potentially being without six players, several of whom play in attacking positions, O-Sullivan is confident that Cartwright will bring many qualities to the match opposite Melbourne on Saturday.
“She has been through the NSWIS program in Sydney, so she is familiar with a lot of the girls in the league, and she-s a very tenacious kind of player, so I think she-ll bring a little bit of controlled aggression to areas of the field which we might need at times,” he said.
With this weekend marking the halfway point of Season 2 of the Westfield W-League, every game ahead is a crucial opportunity for the Jets to claim points to progress up the competition table.
“We-ve got six games left, this is the first one – you win this one and you can knock over the next one, then the outcome just takes care of itself, we-ve just got to work on that process minute by minute,” said O-Sullivan.
“For our team it-s a massive week and it-s one that I am quietly confident that this group will deal with well,” he concluded.
