‘It’s a huge opportunity’: Western United coach on the A-League Women’s newest club

Mark Torcaso has spent his career helping to develop some of Victoria’s best football talents. The Western United coach is eager to showcase the states potential in the club’s first A-League Women's season.

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‘It’s going to be fresh, and it’s going to be exciting’

Western United had began to set the foundations for the women’s team long before they were granted a license by the APL. The club established a development squad to both provide additional training to young players and to give the club a chance to scout potential recruits.

Torcaso was the coach of the squad which will help both he and the players adjust to life in the big league.

“The development squad has been good because it was an opportunity for some really good young players from the state to train in a setting away from their NPLW clubs.

“It’s also an opportunity to touch up on some of the skills that they might not have been able to get at their club.

“That was a training program that was put in place to improve some players that might have needed a little bit of extra work between the ages of 17 and 23, but also to give players an extra training session each week.

“The demands of A-League Women will be four sessions a week. At NPL its only three, so having that fourth one in there was giving them a chance to adjust to that extra session and the demands of what an ALW training session will be.”

"𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝙜𝙞𝙧𝙡𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙒𝙚𝙨𝙩, 𝙞𝙩'𝙨 𝙜𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙢𝙖𝙯𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙥𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮."

Mark Torcaso is eager to get to work for our inaugural @aleaguewomen season👊 pic.twitter.com/IG65AdwdHf
— Western United FC 🏆 (@wufcofficial) July 1, 2022

Although Calder United and the Western United development squad have some overlap, Torcaso will not be drawing exclusively from that group of players to build his first A-League team.

Victoria is a big state, and they are searching for the best available talent by round one of the 2022-23 season.

One of the club’s aims is to take the game to the fans with matches in regional Victoria a possibility. A new group of players will be taking to the big stage and the league is about to embark on its next chapter.

“It’s going to be fresh, and it’s going to be exciting,” says Torcaso.

“We’re going to have a brand new team of players that are going to be able to go out there and perform as best they can.”