Seventeen-year-old Casey Comet Marcie Algeria was unable to reproduce her goal-scoring heroics from the previous weekend as her team went down 1-0 to Ashburton on Sunday.By Marc McGowan
CASEY Comets Soccer Club suffered another agonising Women’s Premier League defeat when Ashburton stole a late 1-0 victory at Ashburton Park on Sunday.
The Comets find themselves in unfamiliar territory at the Easter break, after losing 3-2 to Eltham North in round one, and now languish without a win in ninth place.
Ashburton is one of four undefeated sides after two rounds and Casey faces another of the four, Heidelberg United, in its next match.
To put the Comets’ harsh draw into perspective, after round three they will have played three of the four main challengers touted by Casey coach Deborah Nichols in the pre-season.
Playing away against last year’s third-placed squad was always going to be a tough ask, but the Comets turned up ready to play.
Both teams had chances to open the scoring in the first 45 minutes, but the evenly fought encounter went into half-time as a goalless affair.
The match remained that way, with Casey goalkeeper Emma Bracken forced to do slightly more work than her Ashburton counterpart.
That was until the latter’s teenage sensation and youth international Amy Jackson, who scored a brace in the first round against the Eastern Lions, made the most of a Comet lapse to snatch the lead for her side in the 75th minute.
Unlike the previous weekend, where Eltham North’s winner left Casey little time to recover, the Comets continued to fight, but it proved to be to no avail as they slumped to their second straight loss.
Despite the slow start to the year, Nichols was pleased with her team’s display and saw improvement from its first-round effort.
“I am very happy. It was a much improved and better team performance. We really probably deserved a point,” she said.
Nichols lamented the error that eventually cost Casey the goal and ultimately the contest, after they had competed so well all afternoon.
“We shot ourselves in the foot and were caught in possession again. A sequence of events occurred and that was disappointing because we worked really hard defensively over the park to counteract the speed of the opposition,” she said.
The game marked the debut of 14-year-old Alex Gummer and the rising star proved to be up to the task.
“She did very well, but it was hard to single out anyone else. The whole team overall produced a much improved performance,” Nichols said.
The positives did come with an asterisk, however, with the coach wary of slipping into last season’s habit of losing close battles.
“The only concern was that last year we lost six games and five of them were 1-0 and the other was 4-3,” she said.
“We don’t want to be going down that path again because it cost us top three (and the double chance) last year. I don’t want that same scenario to develop again.”
The Comets’ struggling reserves side received a 10-0 beating by Ashburton and is yet to put a goal on the scoreboard through two rounds.
Nichols also put the call out for players for the club’s under-16 squad.
“If any under-16 players have an ambition to play Premier League, we would like to pick up some kids because there are spots available,” she said.
Casey has the weekend off for Easter and its season resumes on Sunday, 15 April when it faces Heidelberg United at Comets Stadium, on O’Tooles Road, Cranbourne.
The reserves play at 11am before the seniors take to the pitch at 1pm.
