Week 4 of the Nigeria Women Football League (NWFL) will see Sunshine Queens of Akure do battle with reigning champions, Nasarawa Amazons in group B.
With two wins and a draw away to Pelican stars – the league’s most successful side; head coach of Sunshine Queens, Wemimo Matthew spoke to ACLSports on how her team has fared so far in the league and her expectations going forward.
“We’ve played 3 matches and have been able to get 7points and top of our group. I believe the team is doing well and match after match, we are making corrections and there is improvement. The girls are putting everything into it to maintain our position in our group.”
The amazing thing about Sunshine Queens since the commencement of the league is the toughness of the run of fixtures. It’s being a tough start to the season but the team have kept the momentum and according to the head coach, “motivation has helped alot. The management are motivating the girls well and the girls themselves want to show the world that they are good and want to make a name.
“So they are ready to work and want to take every match serious either home or away and they are not ready to lose any match for now,” she said.
Ahead of Wednesday’s game at the Lafia township stadium against the reigning champions, coach Wemimo Matthew revealed that her girls are confident and believe they can spring up a surprise provided the officiating is fair.
“I told the girls before leaving Akure that they can do it and they also know they can do it. All we need is free, fair officiating and we need the help of God.”
Adding that “they (the referees) should officiate free and fair so that the best side can win. The match we are going to play is not a match that should put us under pressure, and the girls have assured me that they can do it and I believe in them.”
On a final note, Wemimo Matthew talked about the secret behind her teams’ prolific goalscoring form as the highest scoring side in the league saying “it is part of the training. We do more of finishing and they have been responding well. That is why most of the attackers and even midfielders are scoring but we’ve also lost a lot of chances like in our first match.
“We scored just 4 goals, but assuming we were able to score all our chances we would have scored up to 7 or 8 goals. So to me we are not there yet; we are still working on it despite the fact that almost all of them are scoring and they still need to score more because the chances will come and we are trying to work on that.”
Nasarawa Amazons playing host to Sunshine Queens at the Lafia township stadium by 4pm on Wednesday evening as the bid to defend their NWFL title continues.
