Hunter were the first to strike against the home side with a convincing 7-0 win before Western made a better account of themselves in a 4-1 defeat to Sydney North later in the day.

Western’s goal was at least one to remember as Lithgow’s Tayla Lloyd delivered a perfect free kick into the top left corner of the Sydney net.

For a young Western team with less experience than other teams, it was always going to be a tough day at the office for the hosts.

“The girls had a tough first game. We came up against quality opposition in Hunter. They’re very strong and they’ve got a good program up there. Most of those girls are at Hunter Sports High. It was always going to be tough,” Western coach Scott Carpenter said.

“They were a big squad too and I think the girls may have been intimidated by their size. We’ve got a very young team with a lot of 13 and 14-year-olds but they played well for our first game together.”

Western were only 2-0 down at half-time against Hunter, and made a good account of themselves early in the second half, before the score spiralled out of control.

A double for Lisa Cochrane was followed up by three goals in the final 10 minutes for Indianna Asimus to change the win from a handy result to dominant one.

Things were more evenly matched for much of the game against Sydney North but the 

visiting side made things difficult with a clinical passing game.

At 12 minutes in, Sydney found the only goal of the half and were unlucky not to score again on several occasions.

Zoe Halpin pushed the lead out to two 10 minutes after the break.

In one promising piece of play for Western, Bathurst’s Hayley Cheney provided a great through ball for Dubbo’s Teegan Hall, which led to a corner, but no result could be found from it.

In fact it was Sydney’s Sophie Harding who sprinted away with the loose ball from the corner, using some handy footwork to beat several defenders and score.

Following some time in the Sydney half Western found a goal through Lloyd, but less than 10 seconds after the kick-off it only took a few touches of the ball to get behind the home side’s defence and extend the lead.

“It’s always hard when the girls live far apart but the big thing to improve is the talk on the field. I think when we start to communicate we start to play better football. They’re all capable of it. They need to be confident in each other and they can make an improvement tomorrow,” Carpenter said.

“That second half we were very strong and had a lot more attacking play in their half. I think they were starting to get frustrating that we were really getting close to them. I think some of their goals were a little bit soft and probably didn’t reflect the half of football we had.”

Western begin their second day against Riverina at 11.30am before rounding out their pool matches against Sydney East at 1.30pm.

HUNTER 7 (Indianna Asimus 3, Lisa Cochrane 2, Sophie Nenadovic, Georgia Little) defeated WESTERN 0 

SYDNEY NORTH 4 (Ally Green, Zoe Halpin, Sophie Harding, Sammy Grant) defeated WESTERN 1 (Tayla Lloyd)