Ideally the Wellington Phoenix would have celebrated their first ever (proper) home game with a memorable win. Realistically they were always up against it facing a Melbourne City team that finished second on the ladder last term and beat the WahiNix 4-0 the only time that they met. Both teams have undergone a few significant changes since then but the difference between them was still real.

This time was a little better than the last time, only losing 4-1. The Nix could have scored more and they should have conceded less but they’ll learn from that, even with a few wiser heads in the mix they’re still a young team figuring things out on the fly. What matters most is that professional women’s football has made its way to Aotearoa. Here are some rapid reaction yarns/ideas.

The Flow Of The Game

Despite a few obvious nerves amongst the players (in light of the occasion), the first half hour was fantastic. The Nix were doing all those cool things from last season only they were doing them better. Defending aggressively. Pressing from the front. Seeking to pass the ball around and progress up the pitch in possession. It was a bang-even game for thirty minutes in which the Phoenix easily had the best of the shooting opportunities (although City’s best moments were from crosses so that’s a bit deceptive).

But things changed after those thirty minutes. This being the first game of the season, and the SheNix having geographic limitations that prevented them from getting ALW level preseason hit-outs, it was only natural that their energetic style of play would see them slow down later in the half. That tiredness was combined with some increasingly sloppy passing which left them vulnerable in transition. Too many counter attacks from which Melbourne City could run at a disjointed back four. They also found trouble playing out from the back a couple of times, which makes sense given that City are a strong pressing team.

Courtesy of one missed sitter by City, the Nix managed to survive at 0-0 heading into the sheds for half-time. If the Phoenix could hit the reset button and start the second half as they did the first then a famous victory was definitely not out of the question. Alas, it went the other way instead. Melly City returned with a spark in their step and the Phoenix didn’t handle it well. 0-0 after 45 minutes became 0-4 after 70 minutes. In particular it was the movement and dribbling of Maria Rojas that shredded them up. That one went awry real fast.

But they did still muster a strong finish across the final fifteen minutes or so. Ava Pritchard set up a goal with a shot that deflected in for an OG. Charlotte Lancaster also hit the post. There were a few other promising moments where the wrong pass was attempted or the execution was lacking but the Phoenix were creating things down the stretch and will be feeling frustrated they couldn’t add a second goal to make the overall scoreline more flattering. Big positives in there with the start and the finish. The stuff in between needs some work though.

The Impact of Betsy Hassett

It didn’t take long to recognise that chucking a 137-cap international into this midfield made a massive immediate difference. Hassett is technically superb. The way she collects the ball on the half-turn, opening up space and distributing the ball where it needs to go. So good. Then there’s her willingness to seek that ball even in situations where she’s under pressure, backing her ability to retain possession. The work rate was quality. She pushed forward and made sure to contribute to the attack when possible. She’s a complete midfielder at this level and the best player that the Wellington Phoenix have on their books (probably by a fair distance if we ignore potential and focus on the here and now).

Actually, Betsy Hassett’s prowess may go even deeper than that. We’ve seen kiwi midfielders of a similar calibre roll into the A-League and dominate in recent years. Liv Chance did it with Brisbane Roar. Annalie Longo did it with Melbourne Victory. Katie Bowen might do it with Melbourne City this season, who knows? The recognition that Hassett gets may depend on how well the Nix go as a team but she’s likely to be one of the best midfielders in the entire competition. An enormous upgrade for the Phoenix in a crucial position.

Michaela Foster’s Set Pieces

For a team that only scored 13 goals in 14 games last season, any and all potential sources of creativity are important. Admittedly that goal ratio gets a lot better if you split the season up. Only scored once in the first 6 games but that was followed by 12 goals in the next 8 so there was clear progress on display. They found the net in each of their final four games and have just turned that into a five-game scoring streak via Kaitlyn Torpey’s own goal. Albeit top scorer Grace Jale did leave for Canberra in the offseason (and has already scored for them, by the way), adding in one more complication to this puzzle.

How does this team plan to score goals? Turnovers from the high press were huge last year. Counter attacks are always a possibility, even more so with the likes of Satchell and Robertson now on board. There’s the hope of some incisive magic from someone like Alyssa Whinham. Didn’t get a lot of attacking third exploits out of the fullbacks last season but against teams they can control possession against (and there will be a few of those this term) getting overlaps and crosses from the RB & LB should be on the menu. And then there’s also set pieces.

Corners and free kicks were a focus last time and they did provide some joy. Losing Jale’s height is a set-back as this isn’t an especially tall team... but they’ve added Michaela Foster and she gave us a glimpse of the full bag of tricks in this game. Her two-footed ability means she curls inswinging corners from both sides. She also fizzed a shot from a free kick. Off target but with good power and shape.

Those corners in particular... Foster has a reputation for scoring directly from corner kicks. She gets height and dip and curl and regularly targets that back post area. Crowd out the keeper with players in the six yard box and see what happens – not only from the initial take but also from the scrambles afterwards. Wherever Mickey Foster plays, and she can play pretty much anywhere, as long as she’s on the pitch she’s going to be serving up tasty set piece deliveries which should soon become one of the first things that opposition scouting reports warn about the Wellington Phoenix.

Preventable Goals & Positional Discipline

Natalie Lawrence said it after the game: it wasn’t a structural thing, it was players not winning individual 1v1 duels that saw this game get out of reach. Really frustrating areas for a coach considering that they were actually pretty good when they were able to defend within their shape. Mackenzie Barry especially, her tackling was outstanding and if she could have been the one marking Maria Rojas then there wouldn’t have been a problem. Of course, that’s not how it went down.

(Sidenote: Rojas only signed three days before the game as an injury replacement for Hannah Wilkinson, meaning she probably didn’t get much scouting focus. That also means that Wilkie is probably missing the first few weeks of the campaign which could be a big blow to her Golden Boot quest, having so narrowly missed out last season).

The fourth goal was beautifully taken by Rhianna Pollicina. Some average aspects to that concession but mostly it was a well-worked goal by the attacking team (that dummy by Emina Ekic, phwoar). The first three goals, on the other hand, all involved the same repeated issue. Twice from Kate Taylor, once from Zoe McMeeken. Let us explore further...

First one, Rojas picks up the ball on halfway after Chloe Knott misplays a backwards pass under pressure. Rojas turns and charges towards goal with only Kate Taylor in front of her. Now, Taylor captained the team here. Since last season she’s become a fully capped international. She’s a magnificent player, the best defensive prospect in the country, but she’s 19 years old and does have a few errors in her. Most of those errors are actually really encouraging. She’s aggressive in the challenge and she backs herself in possession, both with her hard-hit passes and her ability to step through the press. Sure she gets those things wrong sometimes but the success/error ratio is going to shrink and shrink the more she plays... and as it does she’s going to emerge as a very well-rounded centre-back with an extremely high ceiling to what she can achieve.

But those aggressive defensive tendencies got her stuck against Rojas. First she nibbles at the ball but can’t get a foot on it. That’s fine because she stays with Rojas and forces her wide to the right side of the Nix defence, allowing a few defenders to get back in cover. Rojas angles towards the corner and Taylor follows her, offering a little shove in the back. At this point she’s done well... but Taylor gets tunnel-vision and forgets to stay goal-side, getting too close to Maria Rojas and allowing her to turn the corner and cross towards Brylee Henry for the opening goal. Fantastic cross... yet Taylor should’ve been able to keep her in that corner.

Goal two: City advance things down their left wing and then Pollicina flicks a clever outside of the boot pass into the area for Rojas, again marked by Taylor. But Taylor commits the same mistake. Too focused on getting tight to Rojas and forgets to stay goal-side. Rojas takes that invitation to swivel around the corner, then she slices inside and finishes at the near post as Bri Edwards gambles on the cross.

Goal three was over-exuberance from McMeeken having already twice reached in for a tackle only for Rojas to skilfully evade her. The third time she tries a bit too hard and as Rojas hesitates she draws some heavy contact for an easy penalty decision. A bit tired from ZM, who was subbed soon afterwards. Pollicina scored from the spot. Way too easy.

But as Nat Lawrence said these were all instances of individual duels gone awry. Simple things that can be corrected with additional coaching... which you can absolutely guarantee is going down this week, possibly even at this very moment as you read these words.

That Crowd

It wasn’t the 10,000 punters that the club were campaigning for. That was never gonna happen (especially not without being a little more generous with ticket prices). But the ALW doesn’t have a great history of hefty crowd presences. Lots of games have been played at smaller grounds with limited promotion. It’s only really in the last couple of years that the ALW has begun to get its due on the marketing side of things and covid restrictions have kept that from being fully reflected in attendances.

Meaning that the 5213 hearty folks that showed up to this game at Sky Stadium set a new league record for the highest ever attendance in a standalone fixture. Slightly edges the previous record of 5159 when Adelaide hosted Western Sydney last season. There have been higher attendances for double-headers combining with A-League Men’s games... but 5k is massive – in fact it’s more than double the cumulative attendance from all seven Welly Nix ‘home’ games last season. Hopefully they can gather enough momentum to keep things around that 3k mark or better each week.

No team averaged more than 2k home attendance last season though Western United brought in 2753 for their inaugural game and a stunning 1-0 upset win over Melbourne Victory means most of them will probably return (Western’s next game? Away to the Wellington Phoenix on Saturday). HeNix games don’t get the crowd numbers we’d all like for whatever reason and SheNix crowds will be smaller yet... but relative to the ALW the Phoenix have it within the realms of possibility to lead the entire competition in attendance this season. Let’s make it happen.

Selection Conundrums

The Phoenix have a 22-woman squad and five players were out injured for week one... almost a quarter of the team. Lily Alfeld’s had some sneaky surgery which will keep her out of the first three games or so. Emma Rolston tweaked an existing back injury with the Football Ferns while Grace Wisnewski suffered a calf tear on her maiden international call-up. Both were questionable for this game but didn’t make it. Michaela Robertson is recovering from a concussion, possibly ready as soon as next week. Also Isabel Gomez won’t be available for the first couple games due to injury.

Alfeld would have started and captained as goalkeeper. Rolston would most likely have started as the striker. Wisnewski and Gomez were midfield starters last year. At least one of them would’ve missed out for Hassett and possibly both given that Chloe Knott did pretty well in her traditional position of central midfield (needs to be much sharper with her passing though). But they’d for sure have been involved in the matchday squad. Te Reremoana Walker was the only fit player to miss the cut, by the way. Also Robertson would’ve been a good bet to start herself, potentially with Foster playing left back and Van der Meer swapping to the right. Anyway, this was the line-up...

Love a bit of Ava Pritchard as a striker. Seems to suit her skill set better than the wing role we mostly saw her in last year. Foster certainly made a decent case to remain in a more attacking position although Robertson’s speed and directness would nicely match Paige Satchell’s speed and directness on the opposite wing. We also saw Milly Clegg get 25 minutes off the bench up front while Charlotte Lancaster’s left wing cameo was pretty handy once the game got stretched.

There are new players at the club and new combinations that need to be formed. There’s also a new head coach, don’t forget. Nat Lawrence has options and it’ll probably take a few weeks before the depth chart properly begins to form. Gotta figure out what the best eleven looks like.

Katie Bowen @ MCY

Quick word for one of the opposition. Katie Bowen made her Melly City debut in front of a record kiwi crowd which she helped contribute to as the Bowen whanau made the trip down from Auckland to get amongst it. Quite a surprise to see Bowen included in the back three rather than in the midfield position that seemed to be sitting there waiting for her after Rebekah Stott left the club. But although that’s not her preferred spot it might be the best thing for her moving towards the World Cup.

Bowen barely played for the North Carolina Courage in 2022... largely because they seemed to view her as the backup CB behind Abby Erceg. Never gave her a go in the midfield or even at fullback where she clearly could have helped the team. But that does mean she’s been focussing on the arts of central defending... which also happens to be where she played for the Football Ferns in the two recent games against South Korea, earning a shout out from her coach for her efforts.

It’s been a funky situation for KB. She played the first four games of Jitka Klimková’s tenure at CB when a lot of players were unavailable due to border restrictions. Then as those others became available again she was tried at right midfield for the SheBelieves Cup. Against Australia she played one game at CB and one game in midfield. She was in midfield again to face Norway and Wales. Skipped out on the Mexico/Philippines tour for personal reasons. Then played right back against Japan before the Korean games. Betsy Hassett and Malia Steinmetz are the incumbent midfielders but Ria Percival will be back before the World Cup. However it sounds like we may not have the services of Abby Erceg for that tournament which means that Bowen’s best shout of being a starter there could well be as a central defender.

So how’d she go here? Excellently. Played on the left of a back three that sometimes merged into a back four. She got plenty of touches and completed her passes at 90%. Won three tackles. Cleaned up those loose balls at the back. Wasn’t needed going forwards which was the only thing missing. Otherwise she was a coach’s dream on debut... she even wore the captain’s armband after Rhianna Pollicina went off (note that regular skipper Emma Checker was out injured).

Oh and she kept pace with Paige Satchell one time which is not something very many other defenders can claim to have done...

Yeah, she loved it.

Speaking of Kiwi players at Aussie ALW clubs, gotta throw a few vids in here...

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