They may be the defending champions but Brisbane Roar captain Clare Polkinghorne insists her side enters Saturday’s Westfield W-League Grand Final against Sydney FC at Shark Park as definite underdogs.
Having limped into the semi-finals with just one win from their final four regular-season fixtures, the Roar snuck past Central Coast with a 1-0 victory to book a place in the decider.
In contrast, the Sky Blues stormed into the championship match with five consecutive victories, including a convincing 3-0 win over Season One grand finalists Canberra United on Saturday.
And while Brisbane, which bundled Sydney out at the semi-final stage last season in a penalty shootout, is yet to lose to the Sky Blues in three meetings, Polkinghorne is adamant the hosts are the form team heading into the clash.
“Being Queenslanders we love having the tag of underdogs,” Polkinghorne said at FFA headquarters on Friday.
“We’ve read some things where Sydney are favourites and probably deservedly so, they’ve been playing some good football. There’s nothing more we like than a challenge and hopefully both teams can put in a strong performance and be a good advert for women’s football in Australia.”
“We’ve had a really strong week at training and last night everyone was really buzzing around and they were looking forward to coming down here today.”
“We haven’t had the sort of season we had last year or anything but in the last three or four weeks we’ve sort of turned that around.”
But Sydney FC captain Heather Garriock, who labelled Brisbane’s recent form as ‘poor’ on Thursday, was having none of it.
“I still think Brisbane are the favourites,” Garriock said.
“But in saying that the way we have played the last few weeks we have built momentum and we’re playing some fantastic football.”
“Anything’s possible in a grand final, it doesn’t matter if a team’s playing great all year, it comes down to one game and football’s a funny game.”
Garriock cited the upheaval caused by the absence of suspended defender Alesha Clifford to support her argument.
“We’ve probably got about four strikers now in the backline so it’s fantastic,” Garriock joked.
“We’ve had a tough season with injuries with our defence and I think we’re going to have a lot of girls in our backline, so it’s a huge loss Alesha not being there.”
“But in saying that we’ve adapted all season with obstacles and this is just another obstacle we need to overcome.”
Meanwhile, Polkinghorne says the prospect of earning back-to-back titles is not a source of added pressure for the visitors.
“I suppose there’s always that expectation there that we did it last year and we’re probably expected to do it again,” she said.
“But that means nothing. What we did last year is in the past now and we have to look forward … anything can happen tomorrow so we’ve just got to forget about what people are saying and just do our thing on the field.”
