This weekend will be the first time in the Club’s history that both the Women’s and Men’s teams will travel internationally together for an away trip.
It will be a unique experience that will have a real United feel to it, and I hope it will bring us some good fortune for both matches.
We’ll also be travelling two days in advance given the longer travel time and it’s going to be awesome to see a bit of bonding between the teams which will create that family and Christmas vibe.
The Men’s team will also be a curtain raiser for us at Sky Stadium which is a nice change of pace and I hope that fans far and wide stick around and create a great atmosphere for our game too.
It’s pleasing that we’ll be heading to Wellington after a return to winning ways on Sunday against Western Sydney Wanderers.
The team really took the loss against Western United the week prior to heart, after conceding those two late goals, and I was proud of each player out there who responded.
As an entire team we defended really well, and it was important to keep a clean sheet after the Western game, which was our biggest turning point for this one.
It showed great character and in previous years a loss like that would have lingered for some time.
But not this season.
Jenna McCormick also had her first start of the campaign after injury, and she was very impressive and a force at the back.
Mindy (MelindaJ) Barbieri made her starting debut too and she did her job in that midfield so well and really put in a big shift for us.
And of course Chelsie (Dawber) did what she always does. She’s such a consistent performer and her cool penalty proved to be the decider.
It all combined for a great win on the road for us and we were delighted to get back on the winner’s list.
We’ve now got the Phoenix back-to-back which is unique in a sense because we’ll be able to scope them out and tighten certain aspects for the second game.
First of all, we’ll focus on the match on Saturday and prepare for that because we fully expect that to be a tough encounter against Wellington who have not had a lot of luck recently.
Following the weekend we’ll then have a 10-day break which will be nice to refresh before our first match of the season at Coopers Stadium.
Historically we have played well at Coopers, so we’re looking for to a return to that ground and a positive end to the year.
