By ADEM SARICAOGLU
IT HASN’T been a good year for Altona in Premier League women’s hockey but at least the future is still looking bright for the Seagulls.
Altona went into the weekend with a double-header of fixtures against more-fancied opponents and as such the eventual results stayed true to the script.
On Saturday the Seagulls hit the road to tackle the challenge of knocking off reigning premier Greensborough but in the end proved to be no match for the Premier League’s third-placed team, going down 6-1.
Coach Marc Richardson said a tough recent draw has had an adverse effect on his team’s confidence levels.
“We’ve played pretty much top three sides in the last three weeks so we were down on a bit of confidence with a couple of heavy losses, so we started pretty slowly,” Richardson said.
“We were actually down 4-0 at halftime and there were a few stern words (said), which sprung the girls into action a little bit.
“We started really well in the second half and kept it to pretty much 1-1 for most of the second half until they scored their final goal quite late.
“So we were really competitive in the second half which was a good sign.”
On Sunday the Seagulls didn’t fare too much better, going down 3-1 at home to MMC.
However, Altona has been forced to blood a number of youngsters throughout the season and again did so on Sunday, with state representative Tegan Purser missing from the line-up.
“We’ve got really young girls – and we’ve had to add some more youthful girls to the team,” Richardson said.
“So it’s been challenging all the way through and, unfortunately, it continues to be so.”
Meanwhile, Altona’s men haven’t exactly gone much better this season, sitting 11th on the Premier League table, the same position as the Seagulls’ women.
However, on Saturday against Greensborough the Seagulls pulled off a somewhat unexpected victory, managing to conjure up a 3-1 win.
Twenty-four hours later, though, Altona couldn’t back up its good work, and suffered a 3-2 loss to MCC.
