Photo: Mark Tizard/Galaxy United
For inaugural NPLW Grand Finalists Galaxy United and their coach Vincenzo Ierardo, there will be no riding the coattails of the club’s considerable success so far this finals series.
Their sparkling form throughout the post-season has seen them post a six-nil scoreline against Bulleen Lions in the first week before orchestrating a tense penalty shootout win over Alamein FC, but they face a different proposition all-together against the team that’s consistently performed throughout 2016 in Calder United.
“We’ve done a lot of study on how Calder play, how they score goals, how they concede them, their strengths and weaknesses,” Ierardo said.
“Hopefully those things help on Saturday; they’re a hard team to stop, but we’ll give it a shot.
“We know who we’re playing against, they obviously finished on top for a reason. If you look at their players one-by-one and on paper, they’ve got the best team in the league.
“They’ve shown that all season by finishing top and making the final. We’re the underdog and I know Mark [Torcaso] doesn’t like me talking about it but that’s how it is.
“We know where we’re at, we know what we need to do to win so lets just hope we can get that done.”
There will be laboured legs from last weekend’s two-hour slog but despite this, Ierardo is giving his girls every chance at claiming Grand Final success, something the playing group had targeted from the beginning of the season.
With Calder earning a reprieve from playing duties on the weekend after winning their major Semi-Final a fortnight ago, they’ll be right up against it physically should the game go the full stretch once more, but on the flip-side, Ierardo isn’t discounting the impact that the extra momentum may have on the tie.
“The girls had a personal goal to make the Grand Final and be Champions. To their credit, they’ve put in the hard work and they have an opportunity to do that on Saturday,” the Galaxy head coach said.
“They’re definitely up for the fight. The one negative of last week was going through the emotions and playing 120 minutes of football, where Calder could kick back and watch.
“They earned that right so they’ve got the rest while we can see our girls this week are a little fatigued. That will work against us a little bit but we’re trying to do all the right things this week to make sure that all the girls are ready for the game.
“You always want to be playing and keeping the momentum going so that’s definitely been a great thing but if you’re not fresh against a team like Calder, who have so many amazing players, they can hurt you.
“We’ve done a bit of work this week, we’ll taper off towards the end of the week and hopefully that will keep us in good stead.”
The 33-year-old has learnt plenty about the club and league as his first senior top-flight season winds to a close.
In an interesting sub-plot, his counterpart Mark Torcaso and assistant coach Ian Williamson came into the inaugural NPLW season as the most experienced top-flight pair.
“It’s been interesting learning for all of us, Mark might be the longest serving coach and most of girls that he is coaching currently at Calder have been at Bundoora and he’s added in players like Cindy Lay who are quality…he’s got a great outfit.
“We’ve learned where all the clubs are at, including ourselves, who are starting from scratch. We know what we need to do to be competitive in the future. We have a young group of players in the team, a lot of them first year at this level from our under 18’s and community club set-up’s.
“They’ve done a fantastic job, so our challenge for those ones was to get them up to the standard, and they’ve done it themselves. Credit to all of them because we’re now in the situation we are.”
Galaxy United face off against Calder United for the inaugural NPLW Championship at 4pm, Saturday afternoon in Broadmeadows’ ABD Stadium. For those unable to attend the game, Football Federation Victoria will be live streaming the tie via their Facebook page.