Not sure where to put this link, but seeing this is the biggest discussion area for women’s football on SFCU …
Not sure where to put this link, but seeing this is the biggest discussion area for women’s football on SFCU …
So they wanted Welllington to have a team based in Wollongong using Australian players? Thats just unfair on the Nux. Surely you just give Wollongong a W-League team instead
It also makes one ask why is it okay for the men’s Phoenix team to have New Zealanders count as local players but not a women’s Phoenix team? It seems like a really bizarre decision to me. The club is surely not going to try and get a team in the W-League now, seeing how this has been handled.
It’s also a very bad look for us. Are the FFA really going to go down the route of “thanks for helping with the WWC bid, now fuck off”?
Judging from the FFA’s past behaviour I’m going to go with yes.
would have been done on a technicality as the flight costs to get to NZ would be a big hit to some of the clubs
It appears that the Australian women’s hockey team is going through similar “culture” issues as was reported to be occurring within the Matilda’s.
As yet there’s no word on whether the players have been asked to take part in a confidential survey.
Is anyone else following The Guardian’s top 100 female footballers list? So far they’ve released numbers 11-100 and only 2 Australians are on the list.
Caitlin Foord made the list for the first time coming in at 51.
Unbelievably Ellie Carpenter could only make number 76. Although that’s up 12 spots from last year, I find it hard to believe that there’s 75 other players better than her in the world.
I think that’s all pretty reasonable for a team that barely scraped into the last 16 at the recent WC. We’ll end up with 3 once Kerr makes an appearance, but who else deserves to be on a list where we don’t know who a lot of the foreign players are, so can’t compare?
Carpenter is young and very much emerging and we all know she’ll go higher, and Foord also has an argument for being a bit higher up. But taking the period of measurement, the last 12 months or so, a lot of Australians have frankly been fatigued from the two seasons a year slog in WWL/NWSL and out of form as a result, and that’s reflected in where they play or the minutes they are getting.
And then there is the disruption due to Covid. Apart from Kerr, I don’t think that any of our starting Matildas got any game time in the first 6 months of this year apart from the WWL, which will never be given the weight of one of the top Euro leagues or the NWSL particularly given what a short tournament it is. Normally those players would then move to the US starting in March.
The Matildas only played a fandful of games early in the year, with China the only serious opponent, and we only managed a draw at home to them.
Even Sam Kerr you think will be a push to get into the top 10 on her form in the last 12 months, but that’s OK - she’ll get back into her groove and make a return to the podium in the coming years I reckon. Hopefully that very sharp hatty last weekend will be the turning point.
So in short, it reads about right when we look at it realistically based on form during 2020.
Lydia Williams for one. I wouldn’t have her top 10 so I doubt she will be on the list. So far there’s 5 GK’s in the list and I’d have her ahead of at least one of them. In saying that though, somehow the US #1 could only make #58 with 2 others ahead of her. Even just going off the summary they have for the players it’s hard to see how they manage to get the Dutch GK ahead of her at all let alone 14 places higher.
For me, Lydia Williams is as good as anyone in the world. But due to injury, she has played a single league match since the W-League ended in March, and that was last weekend. Finish off this season and start the next as Arsenal first choice and she’ll be in the 100 next year.
If Raso keeps doing well at Everton, especially if she did enough to get a move to a top 4 side, she’d have to be up there too next year.
Kerr came in 7th
Sounds like Kerrs settled in nicely now at Chelsea
Apparently Kerr is playing in a wider position than she has been of late. Can anyone confirm that?
From what I’ve seen she is a winger but licenced to get into the box. She often loses her marker attacking the box to score from crosses.
She started that last game as lone striker up front. But she does drift out wide often.
Apparently there’s going to be a pre-world cup playoff tournament, with 10 teams playing for 3 spots to get in to the 32 teams (the other 29 having being decided by usual methods) WC finals here in Australia. With possibilities of both NZ and us having friendlies against any of those 10 teams. No dates set, but possibly a few months out from the WC in '23.
Source: FIFA/ABC Grandstand Football
For the lack of a general W-League thread, this is as good a moment as you’ll see from that competition. Lovely commentary from Teo as well.
I watched that live. Just saying that he proposed to her on the night isn’t justice. It was her last game, scored (she doesn’t score often), they won the game, and then her actual emotions been pushed even further by the proposal. Followed by her team mates and others crying over it and congratulating her on the spot was fantastic to see.
Not many people on this planet will ever get that, ever. Happy for her.