Adelaide United striker Fiona Worts sat down with aleagues.com.au this week to discuss her rampant return to form at Adelaide United, and her ambition to better the form that won her the Julie Dolan Medal in 2022.
Fiona Worts’ glorious return to Adelaide United: it’s the Ninja A-League comeback story that almost never came to be.
Seven months ago, Worts had just finished her first season at Sydney FC and, after a challenging two-season stint in Australia, decided it was time to move back to England.
Worts won the Ninja A-League Championship with Sydney FC last season but played just six games due to a lateral collateral ligament ligament (LCL) tear suffered last December.
GET YOUR TICKETS TO ROUND 5 OF THE NINJA A-LEAGUE!
Her sole season in Sky Blue followed four campaigns in Red; in her first stint in Adelaide, Worts won the Julie Dolan Medal in 2022 as the best player in the competition but injuries and form have prevented the Englishwoman from returning to her best level since – until now.
Four games into her second spell in Adelaide, Worts has challenged herself to not only replicate but improve on her best form at the Reds, having returned to the City of Churches at the end of an off-season that began with her decision to leave Australia for good.
“I left Sydney at the end of May,” Worts told aleagues.com.au.
“All I knew when I left was that I needed to leave. It’s more challenging than people expect being an international player in the A-League. It’s been a lot of visa troubles, work troubles and constantly having to move house, those kinds of things.
“I was so ready at that point to go home. I shipped everything home, I sold my car. I had no real plan of coming back to the A-League.”
R5 PREVIEW: What you need to know in the Ninja A-League
“I just knew I needed to go home and spend some time there,” Worts continued. “Sometimes, you have to completely commit to it to give yourself the chance to figure out what you really want to do next.
“I was back home and I didn’t really know what was going to happen. I thought initially I was going to go back home and stay there; after being there for a bit, my mind had changed slightly. And now here we are.
“My decision was less about football and more about life in general. There were things I knew I needed and probably haven’t had: a bit more stability with housing,
“I wanted to be able to do something outside of football which was somewhat productive to my life afterwards, either study or relevant work. And I also wanted to be around people that I knew and I liked, my friends, family.
“I thought a lot of those things initially were going to be back home, but when I really thought about it, a lot of those things were also in Adelaide.
“Again, there was a little bit of unfinished business with Adelaide, it was home for me for a long time. So after a bit of time, it kind of made sense that Adelaide was the place I was meant to be.”
R5 PREVIEW: What you need to know in the Ninja A-League
GET YOUR TICKETS TO ROUND 5 OF THE NINJA A-LEAGUE!
Worts returned to Australia in mid-September, and with pre-season training already underway in Adelaide, she slotted straight into training under head coach Adrian Stenta.
Away from the club, Worts is pursuing her off-field goals, too; the 28-year-old has plans to return to work at Kite, a core sponsor of the Reds, where she worked in Business Administration in 2023 prior to her move to Sydney and the Sky Blues.
Worts put balancing her professional pursuits at the forefront of her decision to return to Adelaide United and believes the benefits of said balance are visible on the pitch, where she’s ripping up trees through the early rounds of the 2024-25 Ninja A-League season.
“That’s why I made those decisions,” Worts said.
“The last few years have been really difficult with some things, and I think my football has suffered a bit because of it.
“That was a decision that I was like: ‘If I’m going to play, there are certain things I want to have in my life so I can do it as well as I can do’, so I do think that is a big part of it.”
Worts has scored four goals in four games so far this season, helping the Reds into sixth place ahead of a must-win game against Newcastle Jets in seventh at ServiceFM Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
Adelaide finished at the bottom of the Ninja A-League table last season; the last time Stenta’s side reached the finals was in 2021-22, when Worts had the best individual season of her career to date, scoring 13 goals in 14 games.
Eleven of her 13 goals came in one month of the season. Five of those goals came in one game: an 8-2 win over Brisbane Roar.
GET YOUR TICKETS TO ROUND 5 OF THE NINJA A-LEAGUE!
Worts has failed to replicate that form in the Ninja A-League since – but early signs in 2024-25 are pointing towards the Englishwoman returning to the peak of her powers.
“I still don’t think I’m there yet,” Worts said. “But I definitely think I’m closer to it than I have been the last couple of years. I’m feeling good in training, I’m just trying to make sure I’m not thinking too far ahead and not thinking too far back either, just trying to make every session and every game better and just see where I end up, really.
“A lot of it touches on having those things outside of football that make football a lot easier.
“I think I’ve seen that very clearly in the last few years when you look back on why things went better and why things went worse.
“I’m definitely feeling a lot more positive going into this year, I can picture what it looks like. I guess, I haven’t thought too much about the Julie Dolan (Medal). Because football is hard, sometimes you get looked at more fondly and sometimes less fondly. No one really knows the context of things outside what someone sees in a 90-minute game.
“I haven’t really thought about comparing to a few years ago. I’m quite a different person now, a different player. I still think I can be better than the player who I was a few years ago.”
Worts sits second on the Ninja A-League Golden Boot leaderboard heading into Round 5 and Adelaide’s home clash with the Jets.
The Reds have won two of their four games to date this season, and a continuation of Worts’ rich vein of form would go a long way towards helping the club continue to pick up points, and ultimately end its two-season absence from the finals series.
Worts believes a top-six finish is well within Adelaide’s grasp, having returned to the city after a one-season absence to find the club in a state of transition.
“I feel like over the last few years I’d been there and last year when I wasn’t, this club is always changing,” Worts said.
“I think this year, the players who have come in are, off the pitch, very positive and helping create a really good environment. Also on the pitch, they’re a lot of good quality and I think in the A-League that makes such a big difference, when you have players come in and make a really positive impact on the squad. That affects how your season is going to look.
“But I also think the last couple of years for the club haven’t been great, and they’ve put a lot of work into trying to find out why it’s been like that and what they can do, bringing in some fresh faces off the pitch as well.
“The atmosphere is really good and positive at the minute, and regardless of how we were performing I think we’re in a better position to do well just based on the mindset and the attitude – and we’re also performing, which makes it even better.”
GET YOUR TICKETS TO ROUND 5 OF THE NINJA A-LEAGUE!
Sunday, 5.30pm AEDT: Adelaide United v Newcastle Jets
ServiceFM Stadium – Paramount+ / 10 Play
GET TICKETS | MATCH CENTRE | HOW TO WATCH
