United kicks off its National League campaign on Sunday with a game against Western Springs AFC in Auckland.
The competition has been updated and will feature a double round-robin format in which all teams play each other twice home and away, as opposed to the previous model when they only played once.
Four club teams — Auckland United, Eastern Suburbs, Northern Rovers and Western Springs — will compete alongside four federations teams — Canterbury United Pride, Capital Football, Central Football and Southern United — for the first time.
Southern United captain Rose Morton said despite the minimal pre-season campaign, the side was raring to go this weekend.
She said having not played an Auckland-based team for two years due to Covid brought about a new set of challenges for her and her team-mates, and they were both nervous and excited about that.
"When you play different teams from all over New Zealand you don’t really know what to expect, so I guess it’s both a good thing and a bad thing.
"We focus on ourselves. We want to focus on staying really structured too."
The league has been restored to its full quota of teams this year after Covid restrictions ruled out the four sides from the Northern Region last year.
Morton said winning the title really helped the confidence of the squad.
"It gave gave us a lot of hope that we actually can compete against the top teams and it shows young girls in our federation that we can in the future."
She highlighted former Central captain Abby Rankin as a player to watch out for this season.
United will be without last season’s leading goal-scorer, Amy Hislop, as she is in the United States on a football scholarship at the University of Texas.
Morton said the goals for the team were to compete hard and focus on playing their style of football.
"Ideally, you’d love to win every game but you can’t really control that, and you can’t control other teams.
"We can only control ourselves and the way we play."
The match will kick off at 1pm on Sunday.
Other first-round clashes are Capital versus Eastern, Canterbury versus Central, and Auckland against Northern.
The men’s national league, which does not have a southern team, starts on October 1.
Nic Duff
