Belconnen United Head Coach Scott Conlon oversaw a second-consecutive Federation Cup victory for the club, defeating Canberra Croatia 1-0, and further emphasising the daunting task that comes with taking on the Blue Devils this season.
Conlon expressed his delight for his side to claim a first trophy of 2024.
“There’s no better feeling than winning a trophy, big trophies, small trophies, any trophies that you win is a good feeling,” he said.
With the Blue Devils sitting top of the NPLW, it will come as a just reward for their early season dominance to pick up silverware, and no doubt inspire the side to achieve the feeling once again, with the league title and Grand Final trophies still available at the end of the campaign.
True to their performances throughout 2024, Belconnen dominated Croatia at Deakin Stadium no less, in a match that couldn’t have gone any better for Conlon and his players.
“Overall, I was really happy, like last week we had a few hiccups in a loss, and today the girls were very motivated,” he said. “We made lots of good movement, it was a tricky surface, it was hard to see from the side, but the surface made it difficult to make perfect decisions, but I thought overall we made enough good decisions to create enough good moments, we probably just didn’t reward ourselves with a couple of extra goals.”
It was a performance that saw the side go ahead inside 10 minutes through Pearl Tein and respond to their lead by establishing a more defensive approach to preserve their advantage, which turned out to be an effective decision by Conlon.
“The early goal is always good to stay ahead, but then it does keep in the back of your mind, we don’t need another one, and when you’re thinking you don’t need another one, generally that means you’re going to have to soak up a bit of pressure because they’re going to come at us, but it was nice to score early,” he said.
From the sideline, coaching becomes a different challenge in a final. As the stakes are raised, so too is the importance of making the right tactical decisions, which contrasts with a regular league fixture.
“It’s very different,” he said. “They’re not as open as a normal game, so the tactical side of it becomes more important, because as another coach makes a small change, you are kind of forced to make a small change to react to that, so tactically you’ve got to really keep your eye on it.”
One thing that did help was his prior experience of being on this stage just a year ago, with Conlon articulating the importance for the buildup is, to players knowing what to do in the situation, having already gone through it and emerged successful against Gungahlin United in 2023.
“Yeah, winning it once does help because you can talk to the girls a little bit about the last time and their memories and that’s probably good vibes, good positive thinking rather than having to reflect on losses,” he outlined. “If you can go back to a trophy they’ve won previously, you can try and copy things.”
Now looking ahead to the club’s future, while Belconnen’s 4-year trophy drought was ended last year with the cup victory, before reclaiming the title this season, Conlon indicates that although the club are approaching the potential to recapture the form of the past, they are not quite there yet.
“Look we had a wonderful patch through the middle of the 2010s into the late 2010s, whether I would say that we’re back I don’t know, I think we need a couple more trophies before we talk about that,” he commented.
Words: Sam Watson
