It was a mixed bag of Academy results across the weekend at all levels as the senior teams returned to home ground at Pluim Park.
The NPL2 Men’s side came up against Northern Tigers in a rematch of the 2020 Grand Final, and delivered a comprehensive performance in a 5-0 thrashing at Pluim Park.
There were five different goal scorers on the day, with Sasha Kuzevski’s edge of the box thunderbolt a highlight, and Nick Montgomery said it was a great performance across the board.
“I’m super proud of the boys performance against a good Tigers side,” he said.
“We were aggressive and played at a high tempo which is what I asked from them. It was a convincing win where we created a lot of goal scoring chances and defended some key moments really well.”
“It was great to be back at Pluim Park as it allows us to play the way we want to play and to have our home support there is always a bonus,” Montgomery added.
“After a long time without playing at home it was nice to put on a good show for them.”
The NPL2 Women were looking to build off a win over Sutherland Shire when they faced Nepean FC at Pluim, and got off to the ideal start with Kaitlin Murphy’s goal just seven minutes in.
But Nepean struck back just after the half hour mark before pulling away with two second half goals, and Dan Barrett said the end result was frustrating.
“[I am] a bit disappointed to be honest,” he said.
“It was always going to be a difficult match for us but we didn’t all turn up for the full 90 minutes and at this level that can’t happen and we paid the price.”
“The early goal was brilliant, we scored from a set piece which was nice after some good pressure we built early on.”
“Unfortunately unlike the week before we didn’t keep up the same pressure throughout the match, but now we just have to keep working hard and we must learn from the loss to help us move forward.”
NPL2 Men v Northern Tigers |
1st Grade: 5-0 win (Harry McCarthy, Lewis Miller, Dean Larson, Sasha Kuzevski, Jacob Vasiliou)
U/20’s: 2-1 loss (Lachlan Bayliss)
NPL2 Women v Nepean FC |
1st Grade: 3-1 loss (Kaitlin Murphy)
Reserves: 1-0 loss
U/17’s: 1-1 draw (Mackenzie Perry)
U/15’s: 3-1 loss (Khyra Dickey)
U/14’s: 3-0 win (Cecilia Bradley (3))
NPL Boys Youth v Western Sydney Wanderers |
U/18’s: 1-0 loss
U/16’s: 0-0 draw
U/15’s: 5-0 loss
U/14’s: 6-2 loss (Kobi Cansdell-Sherriff)
U/13’s: 3-1 loss (Fynn Sadler)
