Women's Premier League: OVA women inflict heavy defeat on Kootingal

They were rusty, and duly succumbed to a 2-1 defeat at the hands of North Companions. But the match experience itself was crucial, and coach Steve Doherty hoped it would spur an improved performance on Saturday against the Kootingal Kougars.

In a sense, he was right. But what Doherty saw surprised even him.

"It was a great performance, I was quite surprised how well we played," Doherty said.

OVA's 9-1 win was their first of the season and was the result of a marked improvement in the level of their play, even though at one point they had as few as 10 fit players on the field.

And initially, it looked like things weren't going their way again.

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"We were one-nil down," Doherty said.

"But it was good, we peaked in the second half ... I think having a game under our belt was the big thing. We didn't have any preseason games, we had a pretty ordinary preseason in terms of preparation for a variety of reasons."

In addition to the Mushies' preseason difficulties, the team itself was almost entirely new. OVA lost a swath of players over the off-season and have fielded just the one side this year, composed primarily of a handful from each of their two teams last year, and some newcomers.

"We lost a lot of players from last season," Doherty said.

"We had two teams last year, and a lot of players have left town for university and other things. So we're putting the remnants of two teams together ... it's almost starting from scratch."

Given that Kootingal drew with the talented Tamworth FC side in round one, Doherty knew that they posed a threat coming into the weekend.

While he understood that they, like OVA, were missing some key players, he said their opponents nonetheless played well despite how the scorecard reads.

In fact, while he knows there is "plenty of talent in the squad", Doherty believes they will face a significant challenge in trying to back up their premiership win from last year.

"All the other teams have got good squads," he said.

"We're in the mix of course, and we've got plenty of talent. We've still got a couple of players who haven't played yet because they're injured or unwell, so when they come back in, they'll strengthen us."

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