The fourth Westfield W-League diary entry from Football Ferns’ defender Marlies Oostdam covers her last two games for Melbourne Victory Women, and the experience of seeing the Kiwis beat the Kangaroos in person.
The fourth Westfield W-League diary entry from Football Ferns’ defender Marlies Oostdam covers her last two games for Melbourne Victory Women, and the experience of seeing the Kiwis beat the Kangaroos in person.
Unfortunately, since my last entry, we lost our last two games.
They were close encounters, but I guess you win some, you lose some. No one likes losing, so now it-s time to get back to our winning ways this weekend!
Our game against Canberra was a very physical one. They-re known for their tough tactics and it worked against us in the Saturday night game.
We were put off by their “in your face” approach in the first half and let them control the game.
Being down 1-0 at half time, we came out in the second half wanting to get a goal back. We dominated but didn’t have the killer punch to score any goals.
We were very unlucky to have a penalty disallowed at the end of the game but I guess that-s football!
Let-s just say it was something we’ve learnt from and when we play them in a couple of weeks we have a point to prove and will be looking for revenge.
In the week leading up to our big game against Queensland Roar, we worked a lot on getting physical, getting stuck into tackles and making sure we were in each others faces when receiving the ball – just what Canberra did to us.
We headed to Brisbane on the Friday night and realised at breakfast the next morning that we were lucky enough to be staying at the same hotel as the Aussie cricketers.
One of our girls was overawed by the moment! She did manage to get a photo with a few of the boys.
There was an apparent storm brewing but luckily didn’t hit during our game. But it did mean that the heat played a big factor in the first half. Not that it-s an excuse for losing.
We had our game transferred to another ground due to the previous storms and it was great to be able to play on Ballymore.
What can I say about the game, we played well in waves but let Queensland dominate us at times.
I do know, like with Canberra, we will be out to beat them when they come to our home turf (Epping Stadium) in a few weeks time. And beat them we will!
We were very unfortunate to lose one of our best players through injury only 15 minutes into the first half. Louisa Bisby went up for a header, collided with her opposition player and broke her collarbone.
After our game I rushed off to go and watch the Kangaroos and Kiwis with my boyfriend Bevin.
For those who don-t know, it was the Rugby League World Cup Final at Suncorp Stadium.
Who would have thought… the Kiwis winning that game was just amazing. It all seemed a bit surreal to us. It just goes to show that it doesn’t matter how good a team is, everyone is beatable. Go the Kiwis!
Now, back in Melbourne, we-re getting stuck into training to make sure we win this weekend!
We-re all amped to go!
