What do you get when you merge two powerhouses of South Australian women’s football? A commanding joint entity which has quickly introduced itself to the top tier competition, the Women’s National Premier League (WNPL), with no plans on leaving anytime soon.
At the end of 2021, Flinders Flames WFC and Cumberland United FC merged to provide a lifetime pathway for females to pursue their love of the game. The merger took the results and momentum from Flinders Flames and the history and junior pathways from Cumberland to form a club with undeniable backbone and structure.
Headed by former Socceroo, National Soccer League (NSL) and National Premier League (NPL) legend, and former Adelaide United Women’s assistant coach, Joel Porter, the familiarity of playing style amongst the women and the incredible insight from Joel meant there was only one goal on Flinders United’s radar: promotion.
Club captain, Anastasia Willoughby, who has made her way through the Football SA NTC program was enticed to join the club by Joel and was excited to be a part of something huge:
I’m pretty sure all the girls were on the same page and knew that it was going to be us this season and we wanted to get promotion. We were training hard and every single game day we went out with the mentality that we are going into the WNPL next season. It was about halfway through the season where we realised this was actually real, we can actually do it.”
Joel was also complimentary of the fast growth of the club and their top women’s side, and recognises that promotion was gained through grit and dedication, with the team now presented a new challenge for 2023:
We’re positive about the season. We know it’s going to be very difficult from where we’ve come from and how we’ve probably progressed a little too quick as a new club if I’m perfectly honest. But that’s just another challenge that these girls get to face. We’ve chucked plenty of challenges at the girls and they keep going at them at 120% percent and the results, to the girls credit, were no fluke last year. It was the hard work they put in early. Now they get the opportunity to play against the best girls and women in South Australia. We’re going to find out as a team and individually where we are on that scale and that makes it exciting”.
Flinders United have looked at preparing themselves for the top tier as best they can through coming up against WNPL competition in the WNPL & Women's State League (WSL) pre-season cup and off-season friendlies, however there is still a huge sense of unknown as to what lies ahead from a coaching perspective:
It is pretty hard to prepare for the unknown but we’re taking it each game at a time. We’ve played a couple of good teams so far who have been cemented in the WNPL for a while now. We’re starting to understand the pace of the game, the quality that the girls possess. Every game is going to be different, but it’s something our girls are going to look forward to because they haven’t played these teams before….
We know these teams that have been there for a while have some really experienced girls, some who have played at a higher level than the WNPL. It is an opportunity for our girls to go “wow, this is where I need to get to”.”
The bond between the Flinders United team is undeniable, but this extends beyond the starting XI, with respect filtering all the way up to the coaching and leadership level. Anastasia does not shy away from the importance of Joel’s coaching style in Flinders United’s success to date:
The main thing is he knows how to communicate to the girls and he knows how we play and train and how different people have different needs. He can communicate to us individually and as a team. He knows how to coach us as a collective but also knows when a player individually needs something. He focusses on moving forwards, he doesn’t dwell on any mistakes. He just makes sure we move on and are always at our best.”
Although team goals in the first-year post promotion can surround mere survival, coach and captain both have higher expectations for their side. Joel knows that the task is tough, citing an improvement in league quality closing the gap between the WNPL and WSL:
If you ask the club and most of the girls, I’m pretty sure most would be happy with staying up in the league and not being in the bottom two scenario. To be honest, I have higher expectations than that… I think every coach wants their side to play finals, so for me that is something that is realistic at the moment. I’ve let the girls know that; they’re aware that we’re not just trying to fight relegation, we’ve got other things to look at as well. Also, we’re going to be coming out all guns blazing first round, second round, and all rounds to try and get what we need.
We’ve played West Torrens Birkalla twice this year already. Once in pre-season Cup and once in a friendly and they’ve improved massively. I think the gap has closed a little bit from the lower teams to the mid-table teams. I’m expecting 4 or 5 wins will probably mean more safety for the girls this season.”
Anastasia also spoke of the same high expectations with tenacity and belief:
We all obviously want to stay up. It’s not specifically a goal of ours because I think the way that we’ve been training and playing, we’re not going to take anything less. We’re not going to go out there and say “oh, we might get relegated but at least we tried”, we’re going to come out hard every single week. We’re going to aim for top 4, as high as we can. We know what we can do as a team, and I reckon we can bring it to some other teams and give them a run for their money.”
Now entering the second season of a 10-team WNPL competition, Joel hopes to stamp Flinders United’s legacy within the top tier for years to come, in a competition that he believes has grown in leaps and bounds:
It’s been amazing. I was involved with Ross Aloisi in 2013/14 with the Adelaide United girls and he pretty much revamped that side to what it has become today. He started that culture there and bought in the professionalism that just wasn’t around in the game in SA. Now I think most clubs around the state have good coaches, they appoint good coaches to the women’s team, the juniors are getting better coaches, which is helping the girls coming through. The growth coming through in the last 10 years has been mammoth. The level of play has increased unbelievably. It’s a very difficult league. Our job now is to grow the league and make it more competitive. Reality is, there’s probably 3-4 clubs who could win it, you look at the men’s game and really all 12 could win it. So, we’ve just got to close that gap up. If we can do that year in, year out in the next 2,3,4 years, potentially that is the sort of level we will reach.”
Flinders United face Adelaide Comets at ServiceFM Stadium to open the Women’s National Premier League for 2023 next Friday 10th March at 6:15pm.
