TIGERS, RANGERS QUALIFY FOR GRAND FINALS
IT is the FNQ Women’s Premier League grand final most fans expected but Edge Hill United was forced to work for their place in the decider.
The defending champions were put on the back foot early in their Pennell Field contest against JCU Strikers, but the Tigers slowly worked their way back into the game.
Co-coach Joanna Ward said she was relieved to get the win, which sets up a blockbuster clash with Leichhardt in Saturday’s grand final “It’s a relief,” she said. “We’ve been up the top for a lot of years and, I wasn’t part of it last year, but they obviously won the grand final and the premiership last year and you want to make sure you’re backing that up.
“Anyone coming back into the team … I didn’t want to come back in and lose that momentum from last year.”
The Tiger Park team took control in the second half, and when co-coach Rose Calvert scored it looked as if they would storm home. It wasn’t quite that simple.
While Edge Hill seemingly dominated possession and field position they couldn’t find the back of the net.
It wasn’t until fellow leader Joanna Ward curled one into the bottom right corner with about 10 minutes left in the contest did the Tigers allow themselves to breathe.
“It did (feel good), we’ve been practising it a bit last week at training so it’s nice for it to come off,” Ward said of her goal. “They are a competitive team and from what we saw, they were beating us to the ball early on.
“They scored from a free kick, but (the 1-0 margin) wasn’t indicative of the contest (to that point). I think it was evenly matched.
“Halfway through the first half we turned it around and won those 50-50 balls, and put the game on our terms.
“It’s a massive team effort. We talked this week about defending from the front, not letting it get to the back and then having to work from the back line so from the front, to the back, everyone did their job.
“It wasn’t about scoring to start with, it was about defence from the start to the back.”
The second half belonged to the Tigers, and while JCU had some opportunities to add another to the board Edge Hill United’s defenders close ranks.
“We had the ball at our feet a lot more and we were moving a lot more than they were,” Ward said of the second half.
“They were a lot more static and looking for those long balls over the top so we had to be aware of that and cut those off.”