Adelaide United will welcome Western Sydney Wanderers to the Adelaide Shores Football Centre in the opening round of the Westfield W-League this Saturday.

The Lady Reds return to the Westfield W-League with a largely new look squad for their 2015/16 campaign including a new coach and captain with the latter - Marijana Rajcic - returning to the Westfield W-League after a two year absence.

Rajcic joins the Lady Reds from Metro United WFC in the South Australia Premier League, where she won the Shirley Brown Women’s Premier League Player of the Year award for 2015.

Rajcic is honoured to be named team captain and SA Women’s Player of the Year.

“Definitely proud and honoured to be given the captaincy and obviously the awards were just, I guess individually to top off, an exceptional team effort of I guess , how the season went this year for us (Metro United),” Rajcic said.

The newly appointed Lady Reds captain is happy to be back and enjoying the challenge of the Westfield W-League saying, “I love it, it’s a step up. You know, you’ve got more quality players around you, so trainings are more intense and obviously you’re in a professional environment. So it’s been a good feeling to be back”.

Pre-season has been tough albeit shorter this time around with only four weeks to study a new style of play, which will see the Lady Reds apply high pressure on the opposition defences and score as many goals as possible.

However, Rajcic’s main goal for this season is simple: a top four finish.

“As a team and as a club, we’ve never made the finals, so that’s definitely a goal to finish in the top four,” Rajcic said.

Hoping to make the jump into the top four as well after last season’s last place finish are the Western Sydney Wanderers. 

“We were probably the underdogs last season, which showed in the results,” said midfielder Linda O’Neil about the Wanderers’ showing last season. 

“So it can only be better this year.”

According to O’Neil, the Wanderers are fit and fighting after an intense pre-season.

“Pre-season has been one month longer than last year, we’ve worked and yeah, we’re feeling good about ourselves,” O’Neil said.

“We’re ready to go.”

All in all the midfielder is looking forward to a new season with the Western Sydney Wanderers.

“We’ve worked hard, we’re ready to go and yeah, we’re really looking forward to start the new season,” O’Neil said. 

Lady Reds v Western Sydney Wanderers
Saturday 17 October
Adelaide Shores Football Centre
West Beach Road, West Beach
Kick-Off 3:00pm

Article by Christopher Munker