Evado Studios Women’s Match Report: Royals Held at Home as Title Race Tightens
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Five became five and a half. The winning run is over. Cross Keys Reserve had a Saturday afternoon set up for a sixth straight victory and a possible move into top spot, and it ended with two points dropped, a flat performance to forget, and a title race that just got considerably more interesting.
Preston Lions arrived at Cross Keys eleventh on the ladder, ten points from ten matches, and on paper this was the kind of fixture a side chasing the championship has to take six points from across the season. Instead the Royals settled for one. The visitors deserved the share. They were organised, compact, willing to compete, and on the day they matched a Royals side that never quite found the rhythm it has been producing for the past five rounds.
Emma Langley got the home crowd up after thirty-two minutes, applying the kind of finish that has been the signature of this side’s recent run, and for the seven minutes that followed it looked like the afternoon might play out the way the form suggested it would. Preston had other ideas. Mizuho Yamada levelled in the thirty-ninth, finding the kind of opening that the Royals defence has not been giving up much of lately, and the contest reset to one apiece at the break.
The second half was where the points were there to be won, and where they were left on the pitch. Plenty of possession, plenty of territory, but the cutting edge that delivered seven against Bentleigh Greens last Friday night was not in the building. Sasha Coorey and Isabella Sewards came off in the seventy-sixth, Cobi Wilbert and Paige Kingston-Hogg given the chance to change the picture. Earlier, Langley and Bronte Peel had been replaced by Ava Groba and Alessia Bresciano in the sixty-fourth as the side searched for something to break the deadlock. Nothing came. Preston held their shape, took their point, and went home with a result that means more to them than it should have meant to us.
What this round looked like elsewhere is the part that stings. FC Bulleen Lions beat Boroondara Eagles 2-1 to climb to the top of the table on goal difference. Box Hill United lost 1-0 at Avondale. The window was open. A win at home today would have moved this side to the top of the NPLW Victoria ladder, level on points with Bulleen and Box Hill but with the momentum and the goal difference to match.
Instead, all four sides at the top of the table are now level on twenty-two points, with FC Bulleen Lions first, Box Hill United second, the Royals third, and Boroondara Eagles fourth. South Melbourne are a single point behind in fifth. The title race is no longer a chase. It is a four-way scrap, and possibly five.
Mikaela Jurcic kept things organised through what was a frustrating ninety minutes for the captain, and Sophie Dehne did not have a heap to do behind her. Kendrah Smith picked up a yellow for the Royals, with Eva Harrington and Valentine Pursey collecting the same for Preston.
The good news is that the schedule does not pause for performances we would rather forget. The chance to put this one back on the shelf where it belongs comes next weekend. The bad news is that every other side at the top of the ladder will be saying the same about their next fixture, and from this point in the season every dropped point gets weighed twice; once for what it cost on the day, and once for what it costs in August.
Five wins in a row was a statement. One draw does not undo it, but it does mean the next match becomes one this group has to win to keep pace with league leaders ahead of the all-important transfer window, in which A-Leagues Women’s players begin flooding into NPLW teams.