It’s been a turbulent month at Bundoora, with form wavering and players coming in and out of the side but after overseeing a 3-2 comeback win over bottom placed Monbulk Rangers, co-coaches Mark Torcaso and Paul Kilpatrick have put the inconsistencies down to a changeover of players in the period.
With a number of girls trialling for Melbourne Victory – Gulcan Koca, Enza Barilla, Rachel Alonso and Maika Ruyter-Hooley all once again in the mix – the turnover of players has been at a season peak for United, which has all contributed to an erratic month of football.
Mark Torcaso certainly agreed with those sentiments, adding that the teams slow start – which saw them concede a 20th minute opener to Nikki Ceeney – was probably due to the changes in the line-up.
“I think at the moment as per the results you’ve been seeing, we’re just in a transition of getting players playing again, as we’re obviously losing some to the [Melbourne Victory W-League],” Torcaso said post-game.
“These past couple of weeks have obviously been difficult and even today we started with a few players at different positions and I guess it’s going to be a process over the next few weeks that we’re going to have to deal with.
“If you say we started slow, we probably did but once we got back into the game, I thought we were on top.
“Like I said from the start, it’s about us trying to find the right squad to finish the year off with, knowing that we’re going to lose a few players over the next few weeks.
“That’s probably why the month has been the way it has but that’s not to say that the players coming in aren’t good enough, because they are.
“It’s just a matter of giving them a lot of game time and making sure they can get through the game at a good consistency, at a good quality. I guess that’s our main focus.”
Fellow coach Paul Kilpatrick also chimed in on why he believed his team started the worse of the two, with sub zero temperatures and heavy rain to blame early, before his team both literally and figuratively “warmed up”.
”As Mark’s said, the last month has been a bit up and down. We’ve played in patches but tonight, the first half an hour we were maybe trying to defrost ourselves a little bit,” Kilpatrick said.
“But once we started warming up, we knocked the ball around really well and we took out goals well. For the first 25 minutes of the second half, we were camped in there half and then the game evened out a little bit.
“To be fair, they’ve played well tonight but over the 90 minutes we controlled larger parts of the game.”
With a host of players to return this week, including defender Maika Ruyter-Hooley, forward Rachel Alonso and the injured Louisa Bisby, things are suddenly looking brighter for Bundy, and both coaches agreed that the prospects for next weeks clash against South Melbourne are much improved.
“We had Maika [Ruyter-Hooley], Louisa [Bisby] and Rachel [Alonso] out and yes absolutely, we’re expecting them back,” Kilpatrick said.
“A couple of them [were out] with general soreness so we decided to give them the night off. We get our usual right-back returning next week as well so we’ve got players coming in, our squads looking quite good.”
Torcaso added to that, admitting that those that have come into the squad will be utilized as a number of W-League players start departing towards seasons end.
“Rachel [among others] also possibly has commitments with the W-League so it was best to start getting right the team that’s going to be with us for the rest of the year,” he said.
“Hence why we brought in another couple of players over the last few weeks. That’s the main thing anyway.”
In recent weeks they’ve added to the ranks Stef Galjar and Albanian international Ellvana Curo, who starred on a cold Friday night.
Kilpatrick chose to reserve praise for the entire front three, not just Curo who netted a brace at Monbulk.
“She did alright. Took her goals well and probably could have had more. But I thought the front three tonight were really good,” he said.
“Padiki [Dade] was on song again, Stacey [Papadopoulos], she’s been out for six-seven weeks with an ankle injury so it was good to get some game time into her. She’s an electric type player.”