It was an afternoon of ups and downs for Sydney FC’s A-League Women in a top-of-the-table clash on Sunday.
Their 3-0 defeat of Western United had tensions spiked right through to the final whistle. Although the Sky Blues came out on top with three goals and three points, it was also a match with plenty of mayhem.
Yellow cards handed out left, right and centre resulted in a red, new injuries of concern, and the entire bench getting a run.
The first 45 went scoreless, with neither team able to break the other. All three goals were found in the second half, where the home side seemed to take control. However, this didn’t happen without a bit of a squad knock-around.
The beaming Sydney sun had already made for a higher number of substitutions than usual when a late three-way collision in the box had both Sydney’s keeper, Jada Whyman, and defender, Charlotte Mclean, off for concussion checks. This meant that the entirety of the Sky Blue bench had now been exhausted, and it looks as though these injuries will be up in the air for the upcoming matches.
On top of this, there was a total of five yellow cards handed out amongst Sydney FC players alone, six if you include the second for captain Natalie Tobin, who copped a controversial send-off in the last minutes of the game.
Losing a skipper and having to make lots of squad changes at this crucial point in the season isn’t ideal, especially when Sydney have seen a run of successes so far this season. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
Well, with over 100 caps for Sydney FC, star striker Princess Ibini has seen many changes within her squad over time and has no doubt in her teammates’ ability to fill the gaps in upcoming matches.
“Obviously Nat (Tobin) is a big loss, but we know what we need to do,” Ibini said.
“I’m not worried, we have plenty of girls who can come in and do the job.”
Regardless of the detriments, Ibini has taken nothing but the positives out of this win.
“It puts us in a really good position being a few games behind the other teams, so hopefully we can keep this run going,” she said.
Despite the number of downfalls for Sydney FC, a win is a win. They are still sitting in second position but are now just three points behind Western United. Who knows, we could be in for a rematch of Sunday’s game when we reach the ALW finals in two months’ time.
Feature image credit: Jaime Castaneda
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