Wairarapa United’s Georgia Atkinson in action against Seatoun AFC in April. The two teams will meet again this Saturday. PHOTO/JADE CVETKOV
By Jake Beleski
It wasn’t a win, but the Wairarapa United women’s team are finally on the board after grabbing their first point in the Capital W-League on Saturday.
United led 1-0 at halftime against Stop Out at Hutt Park, but a tight second half saw the scores locked at 2-2 at fulltime.
Coach Kim Nye was understandably thrilled to get the point, but said they had enough chances to claim their first win of the campaign.
“Getting that one point is better than nothing, but having said that, we dominated the first half.
“We didn’t just have a couple of chances — we were 1-0 up at halftime but we should have had six or seven.”
United’s goals came from Stephanie Andrews-Paul and Chontelle Laban.
They had beaten Stop Out in their solitary win of the 2017 season, a 2-0 victory in their Knockout Cup match in June.
Nye said poor execution in the first half on Saturday meant they were unable to push on and win the match, but in the end it was “good not to lose”.
“I think the girls knew they could have done better and should have taken those chances in the first half.
“But at least we had the chances which we haven’t been creating all season, so you’ve got to be positive about it.”
With five matches to go in the Capital W-League, Nye was excited about the chance to put together some more positive performances, and hopefully secure their first league win.
“Overall a draw is the best result we’ve had in the league all season.
“We’ve still got another round to play so hopefully we’ve got a couple more chances to win or draw a couple more games.”
This weekend they will play fourth-placed Seatoun AFC in Wellington, who have won their previous two encounters with United 3-1 and 4-1 respectively.
Further improvements will be needed to have a chance of claiming their first win, Nye said.
“At this high level for us it takes a lot to come up to the pace.
“You get to a stage where you think you expect more, but again even in some of the games we have lost quite heavily in terms of goals, we actually played well.”
