Gilliland comes from NWSL side Chicago Red Stars playing two previous seasons in the United States after playing her college career with the Kentucky Wildcats.

The 23-year-old has a total of six team-mates from Chicago who are playing in the W-League this season – team-mate Jen Hoy, Katie Naughton (Adelaide United), Sofia Huerta (Adelaide United), Danny Colaprico (Adelaide United), Sam Johnson (Melbourne Victory) and Vanessa Di Bernardo (Perth Glory).

Gilliland also plays with compatriots Kelsey Wys and Megan Oyster at the Jets. She made comparisons to the NWSL and believed the W-League was important for her fitness after taking a break in the last off-season.

“I think it’s really good, from what I’ve been told it keeps getting better each year and I’m excited to see how the other teams go,” Gilliland said.

“I love visiting different places in Australia, I’ve never been here. It’s very impressive, I didn’t expect it to be as aggressive as the NWSL, then when I got in the first tackle I was like ‘woah, what’s going on?’

“It’s great to see a different style of play because it’s very different to the NWSL.

“This group came together so quick and we had so many opportunities towards the end, I’m really excited to see what we have for the next few games.”

Newcastle fell 1-0 to Melbourne City in the W-League season opener on Sunday in a game where the Jets pushed the glamour team to the very end.

City was the first team last season to win all its regular season games proceeding to win the Premiership and Championship.

Gilliland said she did not know of City’s firepower and believed her team were unfortunate on the night.

“We were definitely unlucky, I think this group has got a lot of potential,” she said.

“From what I’ve been told about City, I think we hung with them pretty well and I think the group has got some great things to achieve.

“We came in with a different mindset, we wanted to sit and see how they were going to play, see how we went together as a team because we haven’t had time to put our group together at all until this game.

“We did that, we sat in a little bit, at half-time we were like ‘let’s totally go for this’ so we switched it up, went at it and took them on.”

The Jets return to Melbourne next week to take on City’s crosstown rival, Victory.