What Can We Expect From the Welly Nix Women This First Season?
A rather momentous week in kiwi women’s football will be capped off on Friday night with the debut match for the Wellington Phoenix in the A-League Women. Been waiting far too long to get this thing over the line now finally it’s happening... and in the same week that the Football Ferns impressed on tour in South Korea, ending a 15-game winless streak in style. Plus the match schedule was announced for the 2023 World Cup that Aotearoa is co-hosting. Also Ria Percival got nominated for WSL Player of the Month. Good times.
It’s no secret that getting a women’s Welly Nix team up and running is huge for the game in this country. For so long we’ve been missing a professional pathway for kiwi players. That was the main reason for NZ Football’s Future Ferns Development Programme: to bridge the gap between the amateur National League and foreign professional stuff. The FFDP has done a very commendable job of boosting players up to pro contracts overseas (as well as supplying the coaching team for this Phoenix side) but an actual pro team in New Zealand goes beyond. Even if they do have to be based in Australia this first season. Even if there has been a minimum quota of Aussie players enforced upon them. This is still massive.
But you know all that already. Don’t need to be reminded... obviously a Welly Nix women’s team is a big deal. What’s more unknown is how they’re gonna track when the actual footy gets underway. That’s a ponderer we won’t know the answer to until it happens however we can at least throw out a few ideas in the meantime.
Look, the SheNix are probably going to struggle. Most expansion teams do initially, especially a team with as much youth and inexperience as this one. They have just added Aussie fullback Talitha Kramer to fill out the roster who at 30 years of age is four years older than the next most senior player in the squad (Lily Alfeld, 26) and Kramer’s addition really hammers home how undercooked this team appears to be. There are a mere three players aged over 23. There are 12 teenagers. A couple birthdays between now and when they first signed means that Zoe McMeeken is the only 17 year old left but still... damn.
Kramer’s also rare in that she’s played two seasons of A-League W before. 21 appearances to her name... all of them for upcoming opponents Western Sydney Wanderers. Only Annabel Martin has more apps in this comp (40) and neither is exactly a hefty collection, even in a relatively short competition. Isabel Gomez has 5 games, Lily Alfeld 12 of them. Literally no other player in this group has played A-League W before.
Plus they’ve had a truncated preseason which began in one country and, same as the men (in fact they shared a plane), then required relocating to another country where they’ll probably be based for duration the season. Hopefully with some fly-backs to Wellington for home game double-headers but we’ll have to see how that goes.
And another thing. The men’s team has had some troubles re-signing players lately with their captain, top scorer, and best performer all leaving since last term... but they made the re-signing that mattered most: Ufuk Talay. They may not have replaced those gappers but they’re benefiting heaps from the rare consistency they’ve otherwise got from season to season. Lots of returning players with a returning manager and an established system of play. The HeNix have got that to fall back upon. The SheNix, on the other hand, are building from scratch with an entirely new squad of players
That’s all true, therefore those predicted struggles aren’t a huge leap to make. It’s not out of the question that they go the entire season without winning a game. If they do they wouldn’t be the first: the Perth Glory did so last season (0 wins, 1 draw, 11 defeats) and that was with a deliberately young squad at the beginning of a rebuild which also happened to include three NZers: Malia Steinmetz, Liz Anton... and Lily Alfeld who will captain the Phoenix in their inaugural campaign and who’ll be extra desperate for a win or two, imagine going winless two years in a row with two different teams. Lots of similarities between that Perth team and this Wellington team, adding more fuel to the ‘this team could suck’ fire.
Having said all that... there’s a positive feeling emanating from Nix camp at the moment. There’s no doubt that this is a stabilising season, trying to get a foothold in the A-League as a team, with player development a major focus. Giving some quality prospects a chance to settle in knowing that they’ll be better in the long run – there are two more expansion teams joining next season (Western United and Central Coast Mariners) so they’re only going to be the newbies for one campaign.
Meaning that there’s nothing to lose here. They can play with freedom. The Wellington Phoenix are an unknown quantity. Opponents are going to underestimate them (at least until they prove that they shouldn’t) when they look at a squad list of players who’ve mostly never featured in this league before. Those things can be a problem or they can be motivation and all the chat coming out of the camp this week suggests they’re ready to cause a few upsets.
Because... don’t say this too loudly but the A-League W is not as strong as it once was. A large chunk of the top Matildas players have left to play overseas, most of them heading to the English WSL (Rebekah Stott was among that wave until she returned to Melbourne for her cancer treatments). The Matildas squad that played against the USA last week had only six players aligned with A-League clubs and five of them were teenagers (and the other 22yo). The A-League cannot compete with the financial and footballing opportunities that teams in Europe or America have to offer and in a sport that is drastically becoming more lucrative... well, obviously a competition that only runs for four months of the year is going to have difficulties retaining its top talent.
And that’s not a bad thing at all. In fact it’s a great thing, it means that the A-League is operating as a stepping stone to the best leagues on the planet. There are Aussie players at Arsenal, at Chelsea, at West Ham, at Rosengård, at Manchester City, at Lyon. They pretty much all got their start in the A-League. As such the comp does trend a little younger which means that the Wellington Phoenix’s youth approach isn’t as out of sync with the rest of the competition as it may be represented as. Yes, they’re on the extreme end of the sliding scale, but it’s still the same scale.
Also while the overall standard is a fair stretch above the amateur National League in Aotearoa... there’s a solid recent history of the best domestic players from this country making completely smooth steps up to A-League W clubs. Lily Alfeld is one of them. Popped up at Perth Glory and led the comp in saves as well as being voted the club’s Player’s Player of the Year. Her teammate Liz Anton meanwhile was voted Player of the Year (Most Glorious Player, they call it in Perth). Malia Steinmetz didn’t get an award but she did play every game for the Glory, same as the other two. Meanwhile Paige Satchell, who had played pro in Germany but didn’t get a lot of minutes, had a breakout season with Canberra United as they made the semis and has since made another step up by signing with Sydney FC. And, saving the best ‘til last, Claudia Bunge played every single minute for the champions Melbourne Victory in her inaugural campaign.
Five players there who had never played in the A-League previously but all of whom settled in like they were decade-long veterans. That’s inspiration right there: for the very best local players, this leap should not be a daunting one. And young though they may be this squad is stacked with women who fit that bill. Chloe Knott, Saskia Vosper, Grace Jale, Mackenzie Barry, Kelli Brown, Grace Wisnewski, Kate Taylor... they’ve all had strong National League runs and have earned what comes next. Plus by all accounts some of the players they’ve signed from Australian systems are absolute stars in the making. Cushla Rue in particular... not to mention kiwi Te Reremoana Walker who has been in the Newcastle Jets system the last couple years and looks fantastic player.
And there’s actually a lot more continuity here than it first seems. Head coach Gemma Lewis has been super impressive throughout this journey and she’s worked with a large portion of these players before through the FFDP and various age grade stuff. Same deal goes for the overlap of former teammates within the squad. Three players are from the bronze-medallist 2018 U17 World Cup squad (Barry, Wisnewski, Brown). Five of them were in the most recent FFDP class (Pritcard, Wisnewski, Brown, Barry & Vosper) while a couple more have been in that group in previous years (Alfeld & Jale). You’ve got little hubs of Canterbury Pride players (Taylor, McMeeken & Whinham) as well as last year’s Northern Lights squad (Knott, Vosper, Pritchard, Barry). Even from the crew based over the Tasman Sea, Cushla Rue and Jordan Jasnos were teammates for the FNSW team while Hannah Jones and Mona Walker both came through the Jets academy and must surely have crossed paths. Meanwhile Brianna Edwards has spent time with both the Jets and FNSW.
There are some pretty strong teams in the A-League W this year. Even if the Nix do live up to the undercover optimism of the last few paragraphs it’s very hard to conceive of them winning more than they lose or challenging for the finals or anything like that. Literally not coming last would be a massive achievement - last is where basically every prediction, particularly those from over the ditch, has them finishing.
But there’s a lot to like about this team, including some extremely exciting players – to the point where it’s impossible to pick any out because of how many there are to choose from (just read this article instead). One way or the other, they’re going to be a lot of fun to watch and support. Lock that in for a preseason prediction.
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