Wellington Phoenix boss Gemma Lewis will weigh up whether to thrust first-choice goalkeeper Lily Alfeld straight back into her side for Sunday’s A-League Women clash with Western Sydney Wanderers.
Alfeld has been overseas for the last two weeks after being drafted into New Zealand’s SheBelieves Cup squad.
The Wellington captain is due back in Australia on Saturday and Lewis will give her every chance to return for the Wanderers game.
“It kind of depends on how she’s travelled,” Lewis said
“We checked in with her and while she hasn’t played, she has trained.
“We’ll assess when she’s back and we won’t take that off the table. As long as she returns a negative RAT test and is traveling well and feeling well then she will be up for selection.
“She has come from a situation where she’s been training all the time.
“She’ll have only had her time travelling where she hasn’t been training; it’s not like she’s had two weeks away having not done anything.”
Lewis’ side have one win across 12 games this year but a win over the Wanderers, who have only scored five goals all season, would go a long way towards Wellington avoiding a wooden spoon in their inaugural season.
The Phoenix will be without Grace Wisnewski after she announced her decision to return to New Zealand citing her mental wellbeing.
Lewis said the whole side had been touched by Wisnewski’s withdrawal and said they wanted to finish the season strongly against the Wanderers before next week’s clash with Perth.
“It’s still going to be a hard match-up and they’ve had an up and down season and we’ve probably been similar,” she said.
“What we want to show from game one to now is that we’ve come really far and I think being able to put up a good performance would show that.
“We need to make sure we are disciplined because they are a team who can frustrate you. We’ve come up against teams like that and got impatient and made mistakes.”
