Belles head coach Zoey Shaw knows a tough first test is coming her sides’ way when they get their FAWNL Division One Midlands campaign underway on Sunday.
The Belles kick off their season with the visit of last season’s West Midlands Premier Division champions Leafield Athletic to Oxford Street, and Shaw feels they will have to combat the opposition’s confidence after their promotion.
“It’s going to be a very tough start for us, Leafield will be full of confidence having just come up, they’re obviously a team with a lot of quality within it, that’s shown in the fact that they won their league last year and come up,” she said.
“We’re expecting a tough game from them, but we’re expecting the girls to set up and apply themselves how we want them to and how we’ve worked on, we have to make sure we put in to practise what we’ve done in training.
“We might have to change things early on in some games, we might have to address things at half-time, but if we stick to how we’ve been training and how we want to play, hopefully we can get that good result on the board early on.”
The Belles have been training down at Oxford Street this week as Shaw looks to introduce some of her new squad to their new surroundings, and the head coach believes that helping them to acclimatise early on will provide a huge benefit to her squad.
“You can tell this week in training that everyone is just raring to go now, the nerves will always be there for the first game of the season, but the girls are embracing everything and they’ll all be ready to go,” Shaw added.
“It was good to get them training down at Rossington this week, a few of them won’t have ever been down there so that’ll be good for them to get used to the pitch, they’ve got a feel for how the pitch is, and the pitch is looking great as well which is good.
“We’re all really excited to get the ball rolling, we just want to get that one game under our belt and see where we’re at, settle the nerves, and get our season up and running, it’s been a long time coming, but we’re all eager to get going.”
Belles season tickets are still available for just £20 via the Club Doncaster Box Office - with a free DNA Card and Powercore band included in the price! Head to tickets.clubdoncaster.co.uk and #BackTheBelles this year.