For this week’s WA On Wednesday feature, Subiaco head coach Greg Farrell spoke to Impetus’ Ben Gilby about the club’s most successful season in the NPLW WA, the work involved, and ensuring that next season can build on the foundations of this year (29/9/22).

Above: Subiaco head coach Greg Farrell with Zoee Spadano, formerly of Perth SC, who he coached for futsal. Photo supplied by: Greg Farrell.

Subiaco have just had the best season in the club’s NPLW WA history, and guiding them through it was head coach Greg Farrell. Whilst this was his first campaign in charge at the Rosalie Park club, he came with a strong reputation.

Looking at his own personal footballing journey, Farrell reflected: “I came through the representative pathways in Queensland, having played for my junior club Loganholme Soccer Club until I was 14. I also played senior football within the XXXX league (now NPL) and the BPL in Brisbane.

“I’m a school teacher by trade, and now work in the futsal space of football, trying to develop the 5-a-side game and get players such as Zoee Spadano (the former Perth SC player who moved to Italy recently to pursue a pro futsal career) who I’ve coached since she was 12, opportunities to play futsal professionally overseas. I run Futsal WA and the elite league the Supa-Liga will hopefully continue to produce more players as it did Zoee for professional opportunities.”

This season saw Subiaco win more games (six) alone than they had in their previous NPLW WA history, and consequently amass their highest-ever points tally (21). It was the consequence of a lot of hard work, as Farrell identified.

“This season has certainly seen a great deal of change on the female side of the club at Subiaco AFC. I think what we’ve done this season has been on the back of a great deal of hard work from former players and club staff.

“Having a base, and terrific support networks with advanced football people like Adi Juric and Branko Jelic has been terrific for me, especially as I came into the club so late (two weeks before the season began). I was lucky enough to also be able to bring in a few players who I’d coached before or knew from futsal that gave us an improved squad who would be capable of playing a possession-based style of football over time. We were also then very lucky to be able to recruit three high-level players mid-season which then gave us more composure and abilities that we had been lacking.”

Those three players were Matildas legend Lisa De Vanna, another Australian international in Ella Mastrantonio, and Marianna Tabain who spent nine seasons with Perth Glory either side of a year at Melbourne City.

However, before those three arrived, Farrell was busy introducing a new playing style at such short notice, and ensuring his squad had a realistic expectation of where they were in the game.

“We essentially spent the first nine or ten rounds of the season playing catchup and trying to have the players learn to play in a new system, with new team-mates, while playing competitive matches, and dealing with an unavailability list that was contributed to by a disjointed pre-season and covid.

“Players were told at the start of the season that there would be people unhappy with their playing time because they’d been told they were at a certain level, which was very much not the case. Most of them showed a strong mentality and got stuck in, the results and performances for both teams were much better than in the past, and the players were improving week on week.

“We’d equalled the record points and goals haul and then were able to bring in Marianna Tabain, Lisa De Vanna, and Ella Mastrantonio, we asked them to do as much as they could in training and games to help the inexperienced players that we had, to improve, and they bought into that idea and were great influences on the existing squad.

“Both Ella and Marianna missed a game or two with niggly injuries during that time but were there on the bench with the players, and that commitment, which had been shown previously by players like Liz Wallwork who missed eight weeks and Kez Burgess who missed four-six, was a terrific show of leadership.”

Those developments were a key part of the Subiaco head coach’s desire to fill his inexperienced players with belief, resilience, and the ability to produce results like never before.

“I wanted Subiaco to be considered a football club that encouraged female players to play proactive, possession-based football where players were confident and encouraged to always want the ball and to not be afraid of making mistakes as they learn,” Farrell said. “If I could instil that into the group, the players and teams would improve, and over time, the results would then also improve, and they wouldn’t be susceptible to loss of confidence because of an individual result.”

That was hugely important, as for quite a long spell of the campaign, Subi had to draw on players with little or no experience of NPLW WA football.

“For a period of four-five weeks we had between 12 and 17 players from the first team or under-21s unavailable, and so we leaned heavily on the amateur Division Two squad, which was the team that had been earmarked for the defunct under 18 league. We’ve also had Zara Board and Marissa Pidgeon in Zara’s absence, two of the best keepers in WA, and then Chelsie Winchcombe was also a terrific leader for the group and helped with the intention of playing the best football we could, regardless of the result.”

Whilst it was the trio of De Vanna, Mastrantonio, and Tabain who caught the headlines in Subiaco’s record-breaking season, the club’s achievements this season were down to more than their presence. Farrell was keen to share the bigger picture behind Subi’s success.

“There was the promotion of Daisy Groenelwald from our junior boys’ team, we also had Melissa Shepherd’s availability line up from work much better in the back half of the season. But if you look at the number of passes per game, the possession statistics, we were moving in the right direction but lacked a cutting edge up front.

“We beat the NTC and drew with them, had a 1-0 loss to RedStar, and were leading Fremantle 1-0 until the 65^th minute at Fremantle without those players. The quality they (De Vanna, Mastrantonio, and Tabain) added on the field was at least matched by the positivity and improvement they also helped with on the training field, and that was the more important thing for us as a club.

“At the end of the day, the people who complained (that Subiaco’s progress was just down to being able to bring those three players in) are small-minded, they aren’t thinking about the fact that Subiaco brought three of Australia’s best footballers back into WA football. Those same people are probably also the ones complaining that good players are all leaving WA.”

Subiaco are known to be a club with a good junior set-up, something I witnessed myself back in August, but Farrell wants to make sure that this continues to be an ever-improving one for the female side of the club.

“It was something I highlighted when I started as a necessity to continue to improve upon. I’d say there’s a more smooth pathway on the boys’ side of things with the NPL pathway, but that’s as much down to Football West as anything else. Now that more age groups are being added to the female side of the game, hopefully, there will be more of a flow to the development pathway for the girls, where at the moment the two-year gaps causes bottlenecks to occur and often stunts the development of some players.

“We will concentrate very heavily in the next few years on improving the standards within the female side of the club, from moving towards three training sessions per week for juniors and seniors to coaching standards, everything that can be done to ensure that the players are getting the best they possibly can needs to be done. 

Subiaco’s successes from this season will now put a different light on the club and different expectations for the 2023 season. Farrell knows this and is looking forward to having a full pre-season with his squad and being able to select new players he believes will enhance his team.

“We have to keep progressing and that was something that I said after we drew with the then defending champions Murdoch University Melville in round one, people will not treat Subiaco like an easy beat if we continue to improve and develop a proactive style of football.

“Those three players will hopefully return next season and we’d certainly like to bring in some fresh faces as well, especially younger players who are still developing so that they can fit in alongside the young players we already have and begin to learn from those and other senior players.

“Having a pre-season together will certainly make a difference as well, with the fitness levels from the last pre-season being well below where they should’ve been for the NPLW, that will be a key part of pre-season and building into 2023.”