2023 NSW NPL Women’s Wrap – Round 13

We’ve finally made it! Half the NSW NPL Women’s season is done and dusted, and we’re no closer to finding out whose proverbial cuisine will reign supreme. This week, there’s first-ever face-offs, a new exchange student on campus, and a hatful in the Hunter.

This season Beyond 90 will take a look at the big talking points across the league every week, all the way up to the Big Dance in September.

A four-ce of nature

As anyone who has listened to the Beyond90 podcast would know, Blacktown-born APIA Leichhardt winger Ashlie Crofts has long been a favourite of this publication. Formerly of Spartans fame and now plying her trade at Lambert Park, Crofts has emerged as a genuine star of this season’s NSW NPL Women’s season, slotting into APIA’s front-line like it was a well-worn glove.

Pitted against the last-placed Emerging Jets this past weekend, Crofts dismantled her Novocastrian opponents with relative ease, bookending the scoring with two goals in each half to complement her compatriot Holly McNamara’s double just before half time. Despite conceding two goals to Jets striker Josie Allan, APIA kept their collective foot on the accelerator, pushing forward to regain their four-goal advantage through the ever-willing Crofts. One of the many promising attacking players to miss out on a 2022-23 A-League Women season, the Queen of Blacktown will likely be one of the hottest properties in NSW as the reborn Central Coast Mariners enter the national competition in the coming campaign.

When new tribes go to war

With this NSW NPL Women’s season bringing so many new flavours to our collective footballing palates, it’s been a joy to see how newly-promoted clubs Gladesville Ravens and Bulls Academy have handled themselves in the Premier State’s top flight – but also to watch how existing players and coaches tackle the challenge posed by an unseen opponent. Both comfortably in contention for finals football this season, the two Northern Suburbs-based clubs have impressed throughout the first half of the campaign, winning 11 of 25 games between them and producing a tightly-fought tussle when meeting each other.

And that quality was tested this weekend, as the two clubs squared off against their nearest enemies – Bulls against NWS Spirit, and Ravens against Northern Tigers. With the winners edging closer to a top-four spot at the halfway point of the season, the new clubs battled bravely, only for both to lose out to the home sides. That disappointment will surely push the sides on for the return legs, which will be played in the final weeks of the season, so expect revenge to be a dish served cold as the spring weather eventually heats up.

Princess finds a new dominion

While not strictly NSW NPLW news, we’re excited to see 2023 A-League Women double winner Princess Ibini pulling on the gold and black for League One outfit University of NSW this season. Loaned to the Kensington-based side by parent club Sydney, Ibini will join her new team-mates before their next match against Sutherland Shire on Sunday 11 June before a potential home debut at the newly-renovated Village Green against Hills United the following week.

Announcing their new signing, UNSWFC said “[the club] welcomes Ibini-Isei to the Village Green and heralds our shared values of gender equality in football as we passionately action Football Australia and Football NSW’s initiatives to drive equality in football.” Currently sitting two points clear of rivals Central Coast Mariners atop the League One ladder, UNSW will be hoping a player of such quality can bring them that much closer to promotion, and to an inaugural season of NPL Women’s football.

Around The Grounds
Saturday 3 June
NWS Spirit 3 Bulls Academy 1 at Christie Park

Sunday 4 June
Sydney Olympic 1 Illawarra Stingrays 3 at Peter Moore Field
Blacktown Spartans 2 Manly United 1 at Blacktown Football Park
Emerging Jets 2 APIA Leichhardt 6 at Lake Macquarie RFF
Macarthur Rams 3 Sydney University 0 at Lynwood Park
Northern Tigers 2 Gladesville Ravens 1 at North Turramurra Rec Area
Football NSW Institute v Bankstown City – postponed

Top Scorers
12 – Ashlie Crofts (APIA Leichhardt)
8 – Brinley Gentle (Emerging Jets), Morgan Roberts (NWS Spirit), Kelli Brown (Macarthur Rams)