THERE'S been much made of the fact that Roar Women boast the bulk of the super fit, super talented Matildas and are, as a result, quite the W-League juggernaut.
But there's another, lesser known reason contributing to why they're so strong - the team gets to train together day in, day out. Isn't that what the other W-League teams are doing too? After all, what are they doing if they're not training together? Training with other W-League teams, it seems.
Non-existent budgets (most players aren't even getting paid, much less relocated for training) and prohibitive geographic realities prevent many players from travelling to training with their given team, so instead the W-League players are making do.
Dual internationalist Ellyse Perry trains with Sydney but plays for Canberra. Kara Mowbray currently plays for Melbourne, but trains with Roar. And last season Jo Burgess trained with Roar but played for Sydney and wasn't - for obvious reasons - able to train with the Queensland-based team in the week preceding the all-important, sudden-death Brisbane v Sydney semi final.
There are pros and cons with this situation. Obviously it's incredibly generous of the teams to accommodate extra training players, it exposes the players themselves to different coaching and playing styles, and it gives them insight into their opponents' game plans. But there's also a lot to be said for consistently training with one's own team-familiarity might breed contempt, but it will also develop smooth, seamless play. Indeed, the team that regularly trains together stays together under pressure.
We've seen this with Roar, whose passing is fluid and seemingly intuitive, while their strong, experienced, and training-together-induced cohesive back line helps them maintain the greatest defensive record in the league.
But not all teams are as lucky. Their players converge on the match location throughout the season with some having done the groundwork elsewhere. It's better than nothing, but it's got to be tough trying to communicate and co-ordinate plays with team mates whose preferences and styles are unfamiliar in games against such well-oiled teams as Roar.
So what's the solution? Is there even one? Most would argue that paying the players is currently a greater priority than resolving the training location issue, and I'm inclined to agree. But assuming all players get paid, should the next step be relocating the players to their related training locations for the season? Or is the train-here-play-there system yielding other, better, not-covered-here results?
