Football NSW

Womens First Grade begin their NPL season

With with a full pre-season under her belt, Womens First Grade Tiana Gauci is hoping that this will in turn see positive results when the year kick’s off next weekend.

The signing of reigning NPL NSW Women’s player of the year Rola Badawiya has been labelled as one of the major coups of the year – her attacking flair combined with her eye for goal will be a huge plus for the Spirit side.

Gauci managed to secure the signings of Mary Stanic-Floody and Ella Abdul Massih from the Football NSW Institute, adding further depth to the squad.

Pulling the yellow jersey back on again will be fan favourite Nat Tobin along with Erin Pridmore and Morgan Roberts who will be important players to Gauci’s squad.

The ‘Arctic Circle’ as Christie Park has been donned, is a difficult place to visit and Spirit could use this to their advantage.

By Nikola Pozder

Womens First Grade preparations underway for the 2023 season

After a period of time with no finals football, Tiana Gauci will be entrusted with bringing the ‘post-season’ to Christie Park and the NWS Spirit. 

Getting her first full pre-season under her belt as head coach, Gauci and her girls will be ready to go for the 2023 campaign.

They wasted no time in adding arguably the coup of the offseason, 2022 NPL NSW Women’s player of the year, Rola Badawiya, to their playing stocks.

Badawiya was one of the most prolific players in the competition last season, finding the back of the net 13 times and will add some much-needed finesse at the pointy end with the likes of speedster Sophie Harding.

The American will be ready to go following her stint with A-League Women’s side Sydney FC so be sure to watch out for the Badawiya effect at Christie Park.

Added to that, Spirit managed to snap up the talented Mary Stanic-Floody and Ella Abdul Massih from the Football NSW Institute adding strength and depth to both their midfield and defence.

There will be a return for Spirit favourite Rachel Perrins also having taking a year off from the game.

Donning the yellow kit again will be the irreplaceable Nat Tobin along with Erin Pridmore, Morgan Roberts and Katie Offer to name a few.

By Football NSW

Spirit FC partners with Celtic Academy to deliver local coach education

“Be positive. Be aggressive. Be brave.” These are the three ideas that underline the core values of the Celtic academy. A brief, yet valuable insight into these values was shown under the lights of Christie Park to the coaches of many top clubs in the North Western Sydney area. Led by Chris Smith and his team of coaches, the session consisted of two main parts: a presentation explaining Celtic’s values and philosophies, as well as their approach to coaching at an academy level, and an on-field display of various drills regularly conducted by teams within the Celtic academy.

Thepresentation provided a clear description of the structure and processes of Celtic as a club, by explaining a variety of key ethics and morals that the club, its staff, players, and fans pride themselves on. Keeping the Celtic structure in mind, Smith posed the question, “What would you (the coaches) do differently?” allowing the NWSF coaches to break off into small groups to discuss their ideas on any changes they would make to the Australian system. After granting the NWSF coaches a sufficient amount of time to discuss in each other’s groups, the coaches were offered to share their ideas, bringing to light the different views that each coach had, opening doors for interesting discussions between the NWSF and Celtic coaches. The presentation also delved into the non-footballing side of the club, by showing how members of staff such as psychologists, analysts, and physiotherapists all work in correlation with one another to make the club and their players as successful as they are.

The second part of the session progressed to a visual portrayal of Celtic’s scenario-based training. The scenario-based drills used by Celtic is a newly developed training program which involves testing players in in-game situations and focuses on individual player development. This system was designed by coaches within the Celtic academy to challenge players in 1v1, 2v2, and 3v2 situations, assisting in growing their skills from both an attacking and defensive perspective. With the help of Spirit FC’s SAP players, coach Scott Murray and Chris Smith were able to help NWSF coaches understand the benefits of this system, with both coaches digging deep to break down the tactical aspect of each drill, and successfully applying it into real-game scenarios.