Canberra United may be the only team able to boast an undefeated record against the Queensland Roar in the inaugural Westfield W-league season, but skipper Ellie Brush maintains they will be underdogs come kickoff in the Grand Final on Saturday afternoon at Ballymore.
The Roar stormed to the Premiership this year with eight wins and a staggering +20 goal difference, but the only two games they didn’t take the full points from came against Canberra, a 1-1 draw and a 1-0 loss.
The Roar had to fight hard to claim their spot in the Grand Final, needing a dramatic penalty shootout to get on top of Sydney FC in their Semi Final, but Brush believed Canberra would be taking the tag of underdogs into the game.
That suits the visitors just fine.
“We’ve kind of been underdogs the whole season and we’re not really worried about that, we don’t mind that title,” Brush said.
“We feel like we know their game pretty well and we can match up pretty well, so we’re happy with tomorrow’s game.”
Brush said ignoring the Roar’s status as the premier side of the competition was a key part of inflicting the Brisbane-based side’s only defeat for the season.
“We went into that game thinking like we can win it, we went in pretty confidently and I felt like we weren’t intimidated by them, which I think a couple of other teams have been.”
“We just took it to them and tried to play our own game and that worked for us.”
“We’re full of confidence, especially from that game and the last eight weeks of the season where we’ve been really happy with how we’ve been playing.”
Roar captain Kate McShea said her side was more than ready for the challenge of Canberra United.
“The team is really excited at the moment, we had a tough game last week so we’ve spent most of this week recovering and trying to work on the things that we’ve been doing well that have got us this far in the season,” McShea said.
“Canberra are a very strong side, they’re very physical and they like to get into a bit of battle, which we like to do … it’s a bit of revenge for us.”
“We won the Premiership which is a good thing, but it would leave a slight sour taste in our mouth (if we lost), but the W-League has been such a bonus to women’s football in this country.”
