A-League Women: Perth Glory coach Stephen Peters to lean on experience ahead of trip to Wellington Phoenix

It is one of the longest away trips in women’s professional sport, and Perth Glory coach Stephen Peters will be leaning on his most experienced players when his side face Wellington Phoenix on Saturday. The Glory are set to head to New Zealand with several members of their squad having never made the trans-Pacific trip as they seek to return to the A-League Women’s winner’s circle. And with the ‘Nix just two points above them on the ladder, Peters has preached the need to take maximum points after the Glory have dropped points late in recent games. The distance between Perth and Jerry Collins Stadium in Porirua is more than 5000km, and Peters, in his first year as Glory coach, is embracing the challenge of the long-haul flight. “Apparently it’s the biggest trip in world football, so that’s pretty exciting; we’re history makers,” he said. “The trip is what it is. We can’t think about it too much, we’ve just got to think about the football aspect, try and prepare them as best as we can, and have an energetic performance. “That’s probably the main concern, that you won’t travel well, so we’ve just got to make sure we do that part well.” Peters said given it was first trip from Perth to Wellington, he would lean on those players who had undertaken the arduous travel before to guide the others. “It’s going to be interesting to see how people adapt to that and hopefully the ones that have done it before give us a little bit of leadership in that aspect,” he said. “From all the discussions we’ve had, there’s been lots of positive feelings about previous trips to New Zealand. “Any opportunity we get to go out and fight for three points, we look forward to it.” Over the past month, Perth have conceded three goals in the 85th minute or beyond in games they were drawing, costing them multiple points and leaving them adrift of the finals race by three points, and four points above bottom spot of the ladder. Peters said while overall the performances had undoubtedly improved since the start of the season, they needed to start turning potential draws into wins. “You’ve seen how close the table is, three points are at an absolute premium, so if we can get them, that’d be wonderful,” he said. “It would obviously help us close the gap on the top six and the teams above us as well. There’s a lot of work to do, but we’ve got to make sure we stay with the pack first.” Despite the late goals, Peters said the back four of Natalie Tathem, Onyinyechi Zogg, Naomi Chinnama and Grace Johnston had impressed of late, but the next step was clean sheets. “We’re making fantastic strides as a team — not just defensively, but morale-wise. “Our attack actually, funnily enough, has improved but it’s not showing in terms of the goals that we’re scoring, but if you actually look at the style we’re playing, we are evolving as a team, and we’re creating better opportunities — we’ve just got to take them. “The thing that’s eluded us is the clean sheet. If we’re keeping clean sheets, we only need to score one to win.”