Finishing will be the key to Canberra United’s success in round five against Adelaide United when the two sides meet at McKellar Park on Saturday afternoon at the half way mark of the Westfield W-League.
Finishing will be the key to Canberra United-s success in round five against Adelaide United when the two sides meet at McKellar Park on Saturday afternoon at the half way mark of the Westfield W-League.
Composure in front of goal and composure in the dying minutes of the match, will be two vital areas Canberra United will focus on this weekend against a fast finishing Adelaide.
Despite going down 3-2, Adelaide found the net twice in the dying minutes against the Perth Glory a week ago while Canberra collected the three points against Melbourne after narrowly hanging on in the shadows of full time.
“I think we lost a bit of composure and it-s always going to happen when you-ve only got a one goal lead and the other team is trying to push to get an equalizer but we did lose a little bit of composure in the last ten minutes,” head coach Robbie Hooker said.
“As I said to the girls during the week, you want to actually enjoy the last 20 minutes of the game and not have to try to hang on and give the coach a heart attack.”
The backline will receive a welcome boost of confidence and experience for the game against Adelaide with the inclusion former Matilda and Canberra Eclipse captain, Rhian Davies to help with the level-headedness of the backline.
“We-ve got a lot of young players in the backline, it-s probably one of the most inexperienced backlines but this week with the introduction of Rhian Davies will obviously help sure up the experience and we-re really looking forward to having her in the backline,“ Hooker said.
“Defensively I don-t think we-re going to concede many goals so hopefully getting enough wins on the board will be enough to get us into the final.”
“A lot of the work we-ve done pre-season and up until now has been on our defensive structure so in terms of the goals we-ve conceded I-m happy we-ve only conceded four although two or three of those are never expected to concede again.”
Canberra-s lack of composure in front of goals has seen a number of chances squandered in the first four rounds but Hooker believes that it won-t be long until the opposition find themselves in trouble.
“If we-d taken most of our chances we-ve created this year, we would have been able to cruise through those games and we would probably be top of the league so it-s really important that we start putting away those chances.”
“Starting this weekend, one of these teams is going to start feeling the brunt of our attacking weapons.”
Canberra United will be looking to make amends for their previous home defeat in front of a record Westfield W-League attendance by recording their second consecutive victory to maintain their spot in the top four.
“We-re really looking forward to another home game this weekend “
“[The win] will mean a couple of things, it will mean it-s the first time we-ve strung two wins together in the competition and it will be our first win at home in front of a home crowd and I think that-s important as well.”
“If we keep winning away from home, it goes against the grain of what we-re trying to achieve which is trying to get as many people to our home games as we can”
