The Southern United women’s head coach returned from Jordan on Monday, where she was one of seven analysts working in Fifa’s technical study group at the under-17 women’s World Cup.
The group analysed games with the intention of trying to discover the trends in women’s football at the international level for that age.
They were aiming to identify the key things the top teams were doing, so they could be passed on to help grow the women’s game.
Stirling had been away for just over a month and learnt plenty from being part of the group.
"These [other] ladies have been around Fifa for years now," she said.
"They’ve all got A-licence or pro licence coaching qualifications. They’ve all played international football, or coached internationally.
"So it was a great opportunity to pick their brains a bit and just be around some really knowledgeable people.
"It kind of opened my eyes to how much detail goes into international preparation, but I guess I feel now that I’m capable of getting to that level eventually.
"It’s really inspired me to want to push forward in my career and get to that point."
While the final reports had not yet been compiled, she had noticed some key trends among the top teams.
These included teams pressing high up the pitch, pressuring the ball in transition, playing a possession-based game, using the wider areas and having technically skilful players.
Having returned to training on Tuesday night, her focus is now firmly back on Southern United.
The side is coming off a 5-2 loss to the Mainland Pride and will take on Northern at Tahuna Park tomorrow.
"I think definitely [we could use some of what I learnt]. Just looking at the playing model we’ve been working on for the past three years, there’s definitely some areas we could potentially look at tweaking.
"But I think the biggest thing for the players is the intensity of the trainings and the intensity of the games. If we can lift that, we’re going to be in a better position."
The side hoped to compete against the defending champion this weekend and was looking to take positives out its loss at the weekend.
"I don’t think we’ve scored a couple of goals in our opening match for a few years and to get two in a game first up is a good start. It’s a good confidence booster for the girls.
"I think there’s still some work to do in the defence at the moment, but we’re a team that wants to learn and wants to continue to develop, so I’m pretty happy with where the team’s at. I’m sure coming into the game against Northern we’ll be competitive and we’ll want to perform."
