Amy Harrison details Dutch lessons learned, how Wanderers will attack this A-League season

The midfielder returns to the Wanderers this season after two years with perennial table-toppers PSV Vrouwen and she’s looking to bring a rebranded style of football back to Western Sydney.

Aside from the harsh readjustment of her skin to the southern sun, the idea she’s finding it most difficult to wrap her head around is the idea of winning.

It’s an odd concept. A winning mindset you would think is fairly fundamental to any professional footballer’s game, but Harrison believes it’s the major determinant that sets Australia apart from the rest of the football world.

“It’s a strange thing to say because you’d think that is pretty important to football anywhere,” Harrison says.

“Here, obviously we want to win but over there, no matter what team you’re facing, who’s on the field – winning is the bottom line.

“You have to find a way to win.”

Australia’s finals system is an anomaly compared to overseas. Harrison believes that changing the way the A-League is structured would have a profound effect on the quality of the product.

“Each week you need to get points,” Harrison says of the need to strive for the three points rather than settle for the draw.

“If we can start driving that into our players it will help to develop a better winning mentality.

“I think abolishing the finals season and having a full home and away schedule is the way to do it.

“It’s very unknown in most top leagues to have a finals series, they asked me why we do it in the Netherlands and I know it’s how it is but I don’t really have a good reason!

“We just have a different way of doing things, with two trophies. Win as many games but winning that one at the end.”

Winning was hard to come by for the Wanderers in their previous season.

The team managed just one in their 14 games, with only their draw record keeping them off the bottom of the table.

A decent defensive record and plenty of possession football failed to save the Wanderers. Despite Harrison’s absence from the roster, she still vicariously felt the frustrations of her teammates’ inability to put numbers in their ‘F’ column.

“We didn’t score enough goals as a club,” she says.

“You can’t win without them. If you want a championship, yes you have to keep goals out but more importantly is to put it in the back of the net.”

It’s a notion the Wanderers will be looking to tap into in the 2022-23 season, finding a way to win at whatever cost and one that’s seemingly driven the club and coach Kat Smith’s approach to recruiting through the off-season, with Harrison one of a spate of new arrivals at Blacktown.

She’s joined by Sophie Harding, who has made the move south after a year with the Newcastle Jets.

The Jets had almost as painstaking a season in front of goals, only performing marginally better than Western Sydney on the scoresheet.

For a winger, whose deliveries into the area went so often unrewarded, frustration barely begins to cover it.

“Wanderers last year were a great team that just couldn’t score goals,” Harding says.

“It’s been made obvious to me coming in that that’s expected of me, that I have to score.”

The Wanderers finished the 2021/22 season with the worst offensive record in the competition, netting just 7 goals across their 14 games. Harding is looking to turn the table in 2023.

“We’re pretty confident. We’ve had a very good run through the pre-season, won our games and have had no issues scoring,” Harding says.

The former Jet is also the fittest version of herself, the benefit of coming into a club with more money behind the women’s program and a greater focus on individual progression.

“This is an incredibly professional and focused environment. It’s been really interesting coming in from Newcastle, this club is so holistic in their approach to the game.”

“There has been so much strength and conditioning training through the preseason, there’s individual programming designed for player improvement as well, it’s not just on the pitch.”

Harding echoes Harrison’s obsessive desire to win games and score goals.

“Coming from the Jets, it’s pretty obvious as to why I just want to win some games,” she says.

“I‘m just sick of losing games and I think all the girls here, following our pre-season record, I think we’re in a really good headspace about where we’re at and we’re just hoping it reflects with wins.”

Harding won’t go so far as to back Harrison’s nomination for a move to scrap the first past the post structure. She believes the Antipodean obsession with ‘finals footy’ won’t allow for it.

“I think that that will put a lot more pressure on teams to be more consistent, but who doesn’t love finals football!”

“I like the concept but I also love the big stage and I think it entices the best out of players as well.

“It has been so good to have Amy in the squad though, she’s a very good leader and it’s great having her around, she’s a great communicator.”

While Harrison might have to work a little harder on convincing her teammates on the merits of a move to a premiership only league, she’s had no other issues in slotting comfortably back into the Wanderers’ headquarters.

“It’s so nice to be home again, and home in every sense of the word being back at the Wanderers,” Harrison says.

“It was hard adjusting to life again. To have had a life on the other side of the world, going through Covid and now coming back here and trying to slip back into what was is an adjustment but feeling comfortable because this is just such an easy place to be.”

Easy doesn’t translate to winning though, and Harrison’s work in embedding her ‘at all costs’ mindset gets its first test against Harding’s old squad in Newcastle this weekend.

Harding is chomping, Harrison is ready. They know what they have to do is what they couldn’t last year, but the quiet confidence about the squad has a very different feel in 2022-23.