Collie Eagles women’s coach Alan Fontana believes the team have made great strides in their first season in the SWFL competition, despite a difficult start to the season.
The Eagles are yet to win a game, but the nature of the draw has meant the team has played just two games in the first five weeks of the season.
Fontana said not being able to take the field each week has made it ‘hard’ for the team to find their feet.
“We had a bit of a staggered start to the year which made it hard for the girls,” he said.
“It’ll be a lot better to actually play week in, week out now that we’ve got a string of five games in a row. We should see some progress.”
Fontana said he hadn’t set any goals on the season, but was just hoping to see continued improvement.
“They’ve improved since the start of the year when we started pre-season training but it’s a slow process. We’re just taking it one game at a time, we’re just improving their skills and see where it’ll take us throughout the year,” he said.
“I was talking to the Busselton coach [Matt Grosse] after the last game and they were in the same boat as us last year. They actually went through the whole year without winning a game and didn’t score a goal until the last game of the year.
“They’re third on the ladder now, so it shows the girls will take a couple of years to develop. It’s a work in progress and we’ll just keep plugging away.”
The women will take the field on Sunday against South Bunbury and Fontana said he was hoping to see the girls ‘play team football and help each other’.
“I’m hoping they’ll get some talk [out on the field], they’ve been lacking a bit of talk the last two games.
Fontana said he was also hoping to see the team show they are learning the game.
“Hopefully they understand the rules a lot better now and the positions they’re playing and of course having fun.”
Fontana said the number of girls involved with with the club had dropped off slightly since the beginning of the year, but they were still strong.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to get more, and particularly some younger girls coming through, for next year to make sure Collie has a team every year from now on.”