With a more than impressive start to the 2010/11 season, Sydney FC’s W-League side are determined to continue their winning ways when they take on Adelaide United at Wollongong’s WIN Stadium on Saturday afternoon (3pm kick-off).
With a more than impressive start to the 2010/11 season, Sydney FC-s W-League side are determined to continue their winning ways when they take on Adelaide United at Wollongong-s WIN Stadium on Saturday afternoon (3pm kick-off).
The defending Westfield W-League Champions are on a 13 match unbeaten run and have win 14 firmly in their sights against a winless United.
We caught up with coach Alen Stajcic this week to see how things are going:
Q: The girls have been playing incredibly! What are their strengths compared to the other teams in the w-league?
A: We-ve had a good start to the year. We-ve got a really good flowing attacking line, so I-m pretty confident that they-re going to pose a lot of threat to the other teams in the competition. I-m really happy with the way we-ve been playing.
Q: It-s still early on in the competition; can the girls improve further to ensure they defend the championship?
A: We-ve set our success this season as our platform or as the foundation. We want to improve week to week because we know the other teams in the league will be a little bit weary of us now, so we definitely know that we need to keep improving and keep being consistent. There are always things to improve on in the game; you can never play too well.
Q: Team ethic and communication is a crucial component of team work, and is evident within our Sky Blue Girls. How do you promote positive relationships within the team?
A: It all comes from training and hard work, being together fairly regularly over the past few years and especially over the past 12 weeks. We-ve worked especially hard, so I guess as a team and as a group it-s really good when what you work on at training comes together in a game. But we know it can still improve and get better, we-re definitely happy with our start.
Q: Kyah Simon played incredibly against Melbourne Victory, how crucial will she be in this Saturdays game against Adelaide?
A: She-s a fantastic talent. In the last week she has really focused and improved. We-ve always known how much talent she-s got and how dangerous and effective she can be. She-s been really good for us in pre season as well, so I-m just really happy for her, to see her putting in the hard work at practice and pre-season, so we-re very happy with her. That said, every success is a team effort, and the whole team unit is always focused up on attack.
Q: Saturday will be the first double header day for Sydney FC at WIN Stadium, promoting greater attendance and atmosphere. What do you think of this?
A: I think it-s a great idea. I will be watching both games, but I-d love to just go and sit down for three or four hours and watch a couple of games of top quality football, especially in a beautiful venue like WIN Stadium. When we had the Cove at our game last year against Canberra, with only about 100 of them there, the amount of noise they made and the amount of support for the girls was fantastic. Anything we do to support Sydney and the game, whether it-s the means, women-s or the youth game, they-re all initiatives we need to grasp and promote as much as we can.
Q: What things will you be focusing on this week in preparation for Saturday-s game, and what do you know about Adelaide-s style of play?
A: They played last weekend so we got to watch their style of play. They lost 4-0 against Perth but they probably dominated three quarters of the match. I-m always weary about playing against teams like that. They-ve got four of five top players – Vicky Balomenos and an American girl Ashleigh Gunning, so they-ve got a few real good attacking players who we know pretty well and we-re aware of how threatening and dangerous they can be. Training will be fairly consistent, if we do things well every week there-s no need to change it specifically every week, we train as if we were playing the best team every week, and this week it is, it-s Adelaide. We-re just preparing as normal.
