2023 NSW NPL Women’s Wrap – Round 5

The Easter weekend has been and gone, bringing with it plenty of tasty topics from across Australia’s strongest women’s state league. From three points to data points, we’re whipping around the competition to check out this week’s news and niches.

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.

Goals on debut – how good!

This week’s first shoutout goes to none other than last season’s beaten grand finalists the Northern Tigers after their comprehensive 5-2 defeat of the Emerging Jets. Despite their championship efforts not producing top-flight silverware just yet, the North Turramurra side continue to produce quality young players from around the Northern Suburbs, bringing them from SAP and Youth League into the First Grade team with impressive regularity.

One such long-time player who has grown into the senior team is Jasmine Meli; now in her ninth season at the Tigers, Meli marked her starting debut for the club with a 42nd-minute goal, heading Jessie Wharepouri’s lofted free kick past Jets goalkeeper Tegan Harvey to double her side’s advantage.

https://twitter.com/northerntigers_/status/1645683541060059137

Meli went on to be substituted midway through the second half, but her replacement wrote her own piece of history five minutes from full time. Herself making her first-grade debut, young striker Olivia Cartwright made an expert reverse run between the Jets’ centre-backs and latched onto Caitlin Doeglas’ delightful diagonal pass, sliding her shot into the bottom corner before wheeling away with in celebration with her teammates.

Maybe the real grand final victories are the debut goals we score along the way?

What is the deal with goal difference?

It’s only the fifth round of this season and there’s already been so much to take in: the Stingrays’ woes, two promoted sides holding their own, players throughout the league taking their chance while A-League Women mainstays are competing elsewhere. However one interesting note we’ve been keeping an eye on has been the sheer number of goals being scored so early in the season – just this weekend we saw Sydney University and NWS Spirit sharing six goals between them, and Tigers and Emerging Jets contributing seven to the total, while Macarthur, Spirit, and FNSW Institute both sit on a zero goal difference. Such strange scorelines had us thinking: are we seeing more goals this season than we’d expect?

Having run the numbers over the matches already played this season and those played last season, we fully expected to see a massive difference in the trend of goal difference per game, especially taking into consideration the greater number of teams, the Jets’ and Spartans’ leaky defences, and the general *vibe* we got watching the competition unfold. Unfortunately, your intrepid reporter is not quite the Fermat-level statistics wizard he imagined himself to be; instead, this season’s trend actually stays closer to the median than expected, even with those factors listed above. 

Last year’s figures are impacted by Emerging Jets conceding 2.8 goals more than they scored per match, as well as seven of the 12 teams having positive goal differences by season’s end, but facts like this go to show that the eye test can’t be the only measure of a league’s parity or strength.

The Olympic dam is finally breached 

A casual observer of Bulls Academy’s 0-1 win against Sydney Olympic would probably have perused the scoreline and match details and considered the away side the luckier of the two, scoring early and holding on against the side most miserly in front of goal among the competition’s top 10 teams. Anneke Corry’s opener after just two minutes may have been a case of being in the right place at the right time, but the former Ireland under-17 representative would have precious little to show for her efforts had the Bulls defence and Sydney Olympic offence conspired to somehow maintain that status quo for a further 88 minutes.

Lining up opposite a side confident in their abilities having recently taken points off both last year’s beaten semi-finalists, Olympic were also missing Teresa Polias after her red card last time out, relying instead on youngsters Maya Fernández and Kate Woosnam to run the show from midfield. Despite their best attempts though, Olympic’s attacks were repelled time and again by Bulls centre-backs Liz Grey and Jess Seaman, ably marshalled by the acrobatic Trudy Simmons – coincidentally all former Western Sydney A-League Women players – whose starfish-like save to deny Sarah Yatim inside the six-yard box should be in a manual for young goalkeepers.

Even beyond Yatim’s saved shot, Olympic had a perfect opportunity to draw level just shy of half-time after Allira Toby rattled the Bulls’ goal and left Simmons stranded on the turf, only to watch substitute Kiara di Domizio miss an open goal from the six-yard box. Frustrated by the offside flag and a hair less possession over the 90 minutes, Olympic sputtered to the full-time whistle registering only eight shots all game while conceding 11, showing that while their until-now-flawless defence is a capable unit, it doesn’t take a perfect storm to send a few waves over the breakwater.

Around The Grounds
Friday 7 April
APIA Leichhardt 3 Manly United 0 at Lambert Park
Sunday 9 April
Northern Tigers 5 Emerging Jets 2 at North Turramurra Recreation Area
Sydney Olympic 0 Bulls Academy 1 at Peter Moore Field
Gladesville Ravens 2 Illawarra Stingrays 0 at Christie Park
Monday 10 April
Bankstown City 2 Macarthur Rams 3 at Jensen Park
Sydney University 2 NWS Spirit 4 at Sydney University Football Ground
Wednesday 12 April
Football NSW Institute 3 Emerging Jets 2 at Valentine Sports Park
Football NSW Institute v Blacktown Spartans – postponed (Tuesday 18 April)

Top Scorers
5 – Emily Minnett (Manly United)
4 – Stephanie Augoustis (Sydney University), Ashlie Crofts (APIA Leichhardt)