Two weeks out from the start of the season, Coach Ash Wilson and her team headed to Sydney this afternoon for their first trial game against A-League Women’s opponents at Western Sydney Wanderers’ football facility.
The match was played as a traditional match with two 45-minute halves, and saw our side defeated 3-0 despite displaying plenty of positive signs.
While the result didn’t end in the Jets’ favour, Wilson was overall pleased with the hit-out and was excited by much of the football she saw her side play.
“I’m not concerned,” Wilson said. “There’s lot of positives to take out of it.
“They showed a really great attitude and mentality…We’ve been working on a style of play and they worked really hard to implement it.
“There were moments it was excellent, but definitely areas for improvement.”
Although the team weren’t able to find goals, Wilson did make mention of our ability to control various parts of the match and believes that with further fine tuning, the Newcastle side will be able to showcase the style of play they’re aiming toward.
“There were large parts of the game that were pleasing,” she said.
“We were able to create a fair few chances, but didn’t capitalise on them.
“There were a few lapses in concentration that lead to goals. At the end of the first half, and start of the second half, we had lots of controlled possession. So it’s just about continuing that momentum and being able to put away our chances.
Five players were missing from the team list including new international Marie Markussen who continues to adjust to life in Australia, as well as fellow new signings Lucy Johnson and Georgia Boric, and key players Gema Simon and Sunny Franco as they all took time to help recover from minor injuries.
With the start of the season just around the corner, Wilson expects a hotly contested sequence of training sessions as the girls fight for starting spots.
“I’m looking forward to seeing those girls [who were unavailable] coming into contention to add even more to the squad,” she said.
“We’ve got another two weeks of hard work to build on that and work on those combinations and execution.”
Our A-League Women’s side will play another internal trial game next weekend, before they kick-off their season against Sydney FC away from home in Round One.
