Woden Weston FC

Woden-Weston FC
Full name Woden Weston Football Club
Nickname(s) Woden Weston
Founded 2007 (merged 2014)
Ground Woden Park
Ground Capacity 1000
Manager Miro Trninic
League National Premier League ACT
Website Club home page

Woden Weston Football Club, also known as Woden Valley and Weston is a semi-professional football club based in Canberra, Australia. The club currently competes in the National Premier Leagues Capital Football.

Woden Weston field teams in Junior and senior (adult) men’s and women’s National Premier League competitions in the ACT. The club has links to the junior clubs Woden Valley Soccer Club and Weston Molonglo Football Club, providing an elite pathway from junior to senior football.

History

Woden Valley FC was formed in 2007 to distinguish itself as a senior club, where formerly Woden Valley SC was a junior and senior club.

Woden-Weston FC was incorporated in November 2014 with the intention to merge the elite levels of Woden Valley FC and Weston Molonglo FC into one club to compete in the 2015 ACT National Premier League and beyond.

The merger provided Weston Molonglo FC (formally Weston Creek Soccer Club) the opportunity to compete in the Premier League for the first time since 2002 when the club dropped out of the top level of men’s football in the ACT after 10 successful years due to a shake-up of club management with the retirements of Warren Barsley and James Lee from presidency and senior men’s chair respectively.[1]

20 February 2015, the new merged club was officially launched as Woden-Weston FC at the Woden Tradies Club. The two regional ACT clubs will field combined teams in the NPL from u12's through to seniors, however state leagues and juniors will remain separate. The new merged club has chosen to adopt colours from both clubs with the black from Weston Creek and Red from Woden Valley picked to form the new strip. The strip has been compared to the Western Sydney Wanderers home strip with red and black hoops. The inaugural manager appointed to the men’s NPL team is former Canberra FC coach Miro Trninic while the women’s WPL inaugural manager will be long-time Weston Molonglo coach Pat Mills.[2]

12 April 2015, Woden-Weston FC took to the field away from home for their maiden ACT NPL match against Tigers FC. Things could not have started better for the newley merged side as they took a deserved lead in the 29th minute through Pepe Varga goal that the visitors took to the half time break. Unfortunately for Woden-Weston the second half did not go to plan when the returning Alex Oloriegbe snagged a leveler in the 61st minute. The match was then on a knife edge and both teams looked like they could secure all three points and it looked like Woden-Weston would take full advantage of a late red card to Tigers captain Dejan Santrac but it was the Tigers who fired up and secured a late penalty in injury time that Lucas Montana stepped up and slotted home to give the current champions all three points with a 2–1 victory.[3]

22 April 2015, the club learnt their pathway to the FFA Cup round one with a home qualifying match against fellow ACT NPL side Tuggeranong United on 2 May 2015. The match will not be easy for Woden-Weston as Tuggeranong last season surprised most in the FFA Cup with a victory over South Hobart in the first round that set up a huge match against A-League side Melbourne Victory at Viking Park, Erindale.[4]

24 April 2015, Woden-Weston played their inaugural home match at Woden Park against Tuggeranong United in what was billed as the Southside derby.[5] Under the flood-lights the Woden-Weston boys secured an historic first victory for the club in a crushing 4–0 victory. Both Pepe Varga and Tim Anderson scored braces in the match. The win not only got the club off the foot of the table but it enabled the players to lift the newly created Mount Taylor Cup that is given to the derby victors. This was the beginning of a healthy rivalry between the two clubs in the NPL Capital Football league.[6]

Club facilities

Woden-Weston FC play home fixtures at the newly redeveloped Woden Park facility which is co-shared with ACT Little Athletics. The redeveloped facility was officially re-opened on 14 February 2015 and cost $7 million to complete.[7][8]

Players

With only six players returning from the Woden Valley team that competed last season the new squad for 2015 has seen in a number of players drafted in from Canberra City (who dropped out of the NPL), Weston Creek and Monaro Panthers.[9]

The long term plan for the club is to develop youth products and bring them through the youth ranks into the senior elite setup. The major challenge for the club that has a youth pool of over 3,500 players to draw from is to retain the best players once they graduate to first team football as traditionally the club has struggled to compete financially with some of the other NPL clubs in the ACT.[9]

Current NPL Squad as of 21 June 2015.[10][11]

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Position Player
1 Australia Aaron Cashman
2 Australia Adam Dobell
3 Australia Adrian Canizares
4 Australia Andrew Kiley
5 Australia Andrew Slavich
6 Australia Arok Thon
7 Australia GK Chris Trajanoski
8 Australia David Padiet
9 Australia David Dexter
10 Australia David Jenkins
11 Australia James Perry
12 Australia John Gibson
No. Position Player
13 Australia Kabiru Alhassan
14 Australia Mitchell Steenbergen
15 Australia Nikolas Popovich
16 Australia Ohio Asikhia
17 Australia FW Petar Varga
18 Australia Rory Larkin
19 Australia GK Sam Brown
20 Australia Sam Ossato
21 Australia Sam McDonald
22 Australia Tim Anderson
23 Australia Timothy Dehelean
24 Australia Zachary Harrigan

References

  1. ↑ "Weston Molonglo Football Club Inc: Club History". www.foxsportspulse.com. Retrieved 2015-03-18.
  2. ↑ Gaskin, Lee (08 March 2015) "Woden-Weston FC hoping to channel Western Sydney Wanderers in National Premier League debut". Sydney Morning herald. Retrieved 2015-03-16.
  3. ↑ "PlayStation 4 National Premier Leagues: Capital Football Round 1 – Review". Capital Football. Retrieved 2015-04-18.
  4. ↑ Gaskin, Lee (22 April 2015) "Brindabella Blues take on Canberra Olympic in fourth round of FFA Cup qualifying". The Canberra Times. Retrieved 2015-04-24.
  5. ↑ "PS4 NPL: Southside Derby to Light Up Friday Night". Capital Football. Retrieved 2015-04-27.
  6. ↑ "Woden-Weston FC vs Tuggeranong United Round 3 match Card". Fox Sports Pulse. Retrieved 2015-04-27.
  7. ↑ "Woden Park Redevelopment Official Opening". www.actlaa.org.au. 9 February 2015. Retrieved 2015-03-17.
  8. ↑ "New state-of-the-art athletics track at Woden Park". www.cmd.act.gov.au. 22 January 2015. Retrieved 2015-03-17.
  9. 1 2 Gaskin, Lee (23 April 2015) "Woden-Weston FC aiming for long-term success in the National Premier League". The Canberra Times. Retrieved 2015-04-24.
  10. ↑ "Woden-Weston FC Players". www.foxsportspulse.com. Retrieved 2015-03-17.
  11. ↑ "Woden-Weston FC Player Stats". www.foxsportspulse.com. Retrieved 2015-03-17.
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