The other day I was driving from my other job as a support worker to training and it gave me time to reflect on the weekend’s game.
It was our first loss of the season, but of course a timely reminder that it’s not the be all and end all.
I thought we played a solid game for most of it last Sunday, in fact I really was proud of our efforts for the most part and we defended well as a team for 90 minutes.
Emilia Murray made her second start of the season and Jenna McCormick continues to get minutes after her injury in pre-season, so we take positives from a depth perspective.
It was a very hot day to be playing and a brand new Western United team brought a heavily physical presence to the table, and they were crunching tackles all throughout the game.
The extra seven minutes added on due to that head clash allowed the margin for error also, but I’m glad Paige Hayward was okay to continue, and hope Stacey Papadopoulos is recovering well.
We take the lessons from that game, mostly in terms of game management, and move on to Western Sydney away this week.
Wanderers were unlucky, but played well at the weekend, so we know we’ll have to be at our best and concentrated for the full 90 minutes to get the result.
But the biggest thing we have to do now is to leave the Western game in the past, be positive, and not think it’s the end of our campaign after one loss.
We still take assurance from the way we started the season, and we’ll continue to train hard this week to take the steps to beating Western Sydney.
We’ll have four sessions to get in before we travel on the weekend and I’m confident the girls will put in a big shift and be fully prepared for another tough game because there are definitely no easy ones.
