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Phoenix young guns primed for A-League

Gemma Lewis is their first coach. She’s assembled their first squad. Friday brings their first match. But when will they get their first win? Andrew Voerman reports.

THE Wellington Phoenix are going to make plenty of history over the next four months in A-League Women.

Since their entry into Australia’s semi-professional football league was confirmed at the start of September, they have hastily assembled a squad and made their way to their base in Wollongong in New South Wales for a truncated pre-season.

Their inaugural campaign starts this Friday night against Western Sydney Wanderers at WIN Stadium. There, someone will be their first captain. Another 10 players will comprise their first starting XI. Someone might even score their first goal. And come the end of 90 minutes, their first result will be in the history books.

Gemma Lewis has already confirmed her place in history as the team’s first head coach and said they had embraced the fact that there will be a lot more ‘‘firsts’’ ahead.

‘‘This will be their first season as players and it will be my first season as head coach, it will be the first season for the Wellington Phoenix to have a women’s team – those are moments that are going to go down in history and those are moments that we can lean into, to look towards how we want to be remembered in those moments.’’

Lewis has assembled a squad built around a group of the country’s most promising young players, who she has become familiar with in her other roles, as the head of NZ Football’s Future Ferns Domestic Programme and coach of the national under-20 team.

She has been limited to 13 New Zealanders – a condition placed on the Phoenix by Football Australia as part of their entry into the league – and has had to round out her squad with Australians who hadn’t found a place at any of the other nine teams.

As a result, the Phoenix are set to have the youngest and least-experienced squad in A-League Women by some distance, and the bar will be set very low. A Perth Glory side in a similar position finished last without a win last summer, and if the Phoenix can better that effort, it will be regarded as impressive. Lewis has worked with most of the New Zealand players she has on board in some capacity previously, whether in the national league or with national teams, and she said she had seen a lift from them now they were operating at a higher level.

‘‘This is something that has been a really big target for them, so for them going into their first professional season, even though it could be something that could be comfortable for them because of the staff and the people around them, it’s this massive thing that they’ve been aiming up for a number of years, so it’s still something where they’re almost lifting themselves without us needing to even push them, because it’s such a big moment for them.

‘‘We actually sometimes need to almost lift the pressure off because lots of these girls put themselves under immense pressure wanting to perform, and they’re feeling like this is their big break or their chance to prove what they can do . . .

‘We actually sometimes need to almost lift the pressure off because lots of these girls put themselves under immense pressure wanting to perform, and they’re feeling like this is their big break, or their chance to prove what they can do.’ GEMMA LEWIS

sometimes that can go against performance rather than helping them lift their performance, so it’s trying to find that balance as well.’’

Lewis is a former Welsh international who arrived in New Zealand in 2014. In 2017, she led Auckland to the National Women’s League title, ending a period of frustration for the region with the country’s largest female player base, and in 2018 she made it back to the final at the helm of Northern, which represented the other half of the country’s largest city.

In 2018, she was also an assistant coach with the national under-20 team and with the national under-17 team, who won bronze medals at the Fifa Under17 Women’s World Cup in Uruguay. She stepped up to take over the under-20s the following year, but the Covid-19 pandemic has so far denied her the chance to lead them at a World Cup.

With NZ Football having a large say in the operations of the Phoenix women in their first two years, ahead of the 2023 Fifa Women’s World Cup, and providing significant funding for the team, Lewis was always the favourite to take charge.

A lack of pathways for female coaches has been a long-running issue across a number of sports and was recently put in the spotlight in New Zealand, when four men were put in charge of the four Super Rugby Aupiki teams ahead of the first edition of the new semi-professional women’s competition.

Lewis said it was a credit to those in charge at the Phoenix that they had been bold enough to appoint her, giving A-League Women its fourth female head coach – and at age 31, its secondyoungest – but stressed she was well-qualified for the job.

‘‘In terms of my experience in New Zealand, my coaching qualifications, my background, I’m just as experienced, if not more than, than some of the male coaches that potentially would have been up for the job, and have the same kind of qualifications as our All Whites head coach has.

‘‘So as much as I’m proud that the Phoenix took the shot on having a female coach in charge, I also don’t necessarily feel like it’s been gifted to me or that anybody would have been a lot better fit for the job, especially in the timeframe we had to put things together.

‘‘I’m glad the Phoenix have done it. I think they’ve planted their flag in the sand to show where they sit in terms of that investment in the female game and the female pathways, not just in the players, not just in having a women’s team in the A-League, but also in the administration side behind the team as well.’’

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2021-11-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

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