Southern hold Lights to goalless stalemate

The Northern Lights produced a dominant performance, but neither they nor Southern United could break the deadlock after 90 minutes of football at McFetridge Park.

A game of few clear cut openings saw Gemma Lewis’ Lights boast most of the possession inside the first 45 minutes, with Southern only having the odd two or three forays into their opponents’ half.

Despite this, it was a resilient defensive effort by Southern to keep Lewis’ side at Bay with both Kirsty Hayr and Shontelle Smith producing some timely tackles inside their 18-yard box to deny the Lights any real goal scoring opportunity.

The home side did have the ball in the back of the net in the 28th minute however, through Dayna Stevens, but Maggie Jenkins who set up her fellow New Zealand U-20 team-mate was ruled offside.

In the second spell, Southern found some sort of rhythm and created some half chances through the pace of Lara Wall to ensure they had a chance to come out on top, but it was the Lights’ New Zealand U-20 attacking duo of Stevens and Jenkins who created the best two chances of the game for either side.

Two minutes into the second half, Stevens found herself one on one with Southern’s ‘Keeper Jordan Woodward, but her lobbed effort was cleared off the line by the retreating Coral Seath.

Towards the end of the second half, Jenkins found herself out wide and put in a low driven cross which beat Woodward, leaving Stevens with a tap in, but much to the striker’s delight, the ball bobbled over her foot and was cleared to safety by the covering defender.

Despite the result, Lewis was upbeat about the home side’s performance.

“Pretty happy across the board,” Lewis said.

“We’ve only had four training sessions together so of course there are some positives taken out of it and some of the stuff we had been working on was definitely evident today.”

Lewis credited Southern coach Ignacio Sande and the change of tactics his side bought out onto the field in the second spell.

“This is what you’ve got to expect in the league,” Lewis said of Southern’s tactical changes.

“You’ve got good coaches in place and in the first half I think Southern were on the back foot a lot and they adjusted that in the second half, which is a credit to them.

“It took us a while to kind of settle down and work it out and try and get the game back towards the end of the second half.”

Updated 00:10 - 25 Oct 2018 by Markus Fjørtoft