A young Adelaide City side hosted Sturt Marion at Park 18 on Sunday in Round 3 of the Women’s Premier League.

 

Adelaide City were looking to get their second win from as many games knew it would be tough as they were coming up against a team equal top after the first two weeks.

 

The home side came out firing with high pressure, retaining possession almost as soon as they lost it in the opening ten minutes of the game, not allowing the opposition to leave their own half.

 

Desperate defending from Sturt Marion kept the score level as Adelaide City’s Daniella Di Bartolo was played into a dangerous position on two occasions, but the danger was cleared before it became costly.

 

It was only so long that the Sturt Marion defence could hold out, in the 14th minute of play Adelaide City’s left full back Alicia Nickolas took a free kick from out wide, cheekily chipping Sturt Marion’s goalkeeper to give Adelaide City a one-goal advantage very early in the game.

 

With half an hour of play gone, a through ball was played for Daniella Di Bartolo to run onto with only the keeper to beat, being closed down quickly, Di Bartolo powered a shot in that the Sturt Marion goalkeeper managed to get in the way of and the ball deflected out of play for a corner kick, stopping the one-nil deficit from increasing.

 

After the majority of the first half was being played within Sturt Marion’s defensive half, the away side began to find their feet, stringing some nice passes together and breaking through the lines to put the first bit of real pressure on the Adelaide City defence. Unfortunately it came a little too late as the half time whistle came relieving Adelaide City’s back line.

 

Adelaide City began the second half much like they did the first, pressing high and causing mistakes from their opponents, one that led to another one-on-one with the goalkeeper, but Di Bartolo couldn’t keep the ball down as it only just lifted over the crossbar.

 

As the game went on, Sturt Marion managed to get themselves more involved and contested. In the 55th minute of the game an attacking header was cleared off of the Adelaide City goal line from a dangerously whipped in Sturt Marion corner.

 

The game was coming to the closing minutes, Sturt Marion was desperate to level the score, as the ball was cut back from the touch line and struck first time, connecting with the post and going out for a goal kick, the luck just wasn’t on their side.

 

The final whistled sounded minutes later, leaving a position dominant Adelaide City with a valuable home win, 1-0.

 

Round 3 Results

 

Sunday 6 April

Fulham United 1 (G. Macri 1) MUWFC 4 (Z. Sgargetta 1, C. Reynolds 1, M. Brown 1, M. Mammone 1)

Para Hills 1 (N. Tilley 1) FFSA U14/15 Girls 2 (A. Chidiac 1, L. Millar 1)

Adelaide University 2 (A. Ebbs 1, E. Bills 1) West Adelaide 5 (S. Scalzi 3, R. Wallace 2)

Adelaide City 1 (A. Nickolas 1) Sturt Marion 0