Women’s side primed

By PATRICIA KEAMO
PAPUA New Guinea women’s football team coach Spencer Prior says his side will have to be super competitive in their clash against Panama on Sunday in the inter-confederation playoff for a spot in the Fifa Women’s World Cup.
Prior said the players were working really hard in Auckland, New Zealand with the 23-man squad were in a good physical and mental shape as they go into game preparation mode.
“We’re not going to be able to go into the game and win in it in the first 45 minutes if we show fear and complacency or waiting to see what’s going to happen,” Prior responded yesterday to questions from The National.
“If we do that, we could certainly lose it in the first 45 minutes so we kind of broke the game down into the first 15 minutes, next block of 10 minutes then the rest of the first half.
“Really it’s just making sure that we’re super competitive, if we get our chances we take them but we certainly make sure that we try and win our individual battles.
“We’ve got 23 players including three goal keepers and we’re going to use as many of them as possible if we’re successful to get to the World Cup.
“We spoke to the group and it’s highly unlikely that we would be able to win these two matches back-to-back in such a short turnaround with the same 11 players for potentially 240 minutes if you’re factoring extra time in both games.”
Prior said ensuring that the team had reasonable depth was important hence more than two players were selected for each position.
“Everybody understands their roles and responsibility whether they are starting in the first game or they are going to be coming on along the game,” the Englishman said.
“It’s too far out from the game to announce the first 11 but I’ve picked it. I’m pretty close to what I want but it’s not close to final. I want to make sure everybody is ready and focused.
“We’ve made a couple of changes just to make sure people stay engaged and focused and nobody should take it for granted that they’re going to be starting.”
Prior added that the team have been watching match videos of Panama to have a fair idea of what they were going up against as they plan their approach for Sunday’s match.
We’ve been trying to work out how to gain their strengths, also exploring when they might be vulnerable but also focusing on our performance in how we’re going to play,” said the former Premier League defender.