Above: New signing Maja Markovski goes over her dream start with Canberra. Image: Canberra United.
By Ryan Miller-Woods (10/16/24).
With the season just over two weeks away, Canberra United had a chance to test out their tactics and squad against the NPLW Capital Football All-Stars.
For her first proper hit out with Canberra United, you really couldn’t have asked for much better from new recruit Markovski, who played a pivotal role alongside club legend Michelle Heyman in attack, scoring a brace and playing the entire match.
It’s hard to believe that Markovski didn’t play in the A-League Women last season, but she’s back in the league after a great NPLW Victoria season with Bulleen Lions where she won the 2024 NPLW Gold Medal and the NPLW Victoria Golden Boot with 20 goals.
Markovski sees the move to the capital city as a great chance to learn even more about the craft of the attacker from one of the masters – Michelle Heyman.
“I think learning off players like Michelle will be amazing, especially because I’m a striker as well. Just (to) gain as much experience as possible from those players and hopefully, we can have a good season together.”
Reflecting on what she’s picked up from Heyman already, Markovski said: “When you’ve got someone of her quality in the box, you don’t have to do much, you’ve just got to put it in the right places and she’ll do the rest.”
In terms of what her new coach Jagarinec wants to see from her this season, the newly arrived attacker hinted at a positional change.
“It’s been kind of a bit different for me this year, I’ve predominantly played in the middle as a striker but obviously Michelle’s around. So, he wants to see me be a wide player or just in behind as a 10 for her.”
Alex McKenzie is going into her second season with Canberra United and was realistic about what is ahead.
“…There’s a lot to be done, we’ve got a lot of work to do. I think it would be naïve to think we don’t, but super exciting and seeing the turnout, it’s really promising.”
There will be a major focus on Canberra’s defence for this season, and McKenzie emphasised what the club’s new head coach wants to see in terms of improvements this time round: said, “I think he’s invested a lot of time and resources in our staffing team to work out where we can improve in terms of specifics and then just working collectively to ensure that we’re ‘safe as houses.’”
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