Alana’s father Tony believes his daughter has a good balance with her football and her studies.

“Having a balance is important and she’s a good student who does well with her studies,” Tony said.

“I think she can balance it out really well. Her teachers are happy with her and she’s got all these extra classes when she missed school because of the Melbourne City training.

“We can see from the outside what she was doing as a junior, developing and seeing how it gets harder.

“She was dominating earlier then you get to a stage where they’re playing in a more difficult league where they have big ladies playing against them.


“It’s more their skill getting them through games and us getting them going saying ‘don’t worry about the result, it’s how you guys compete’.”

Alana also takes confidence out of the journeys of Melbourne Victory’s Kyra Cooney-Cross and Melbourne City’s Sofia Sakalis who are both 16 and have played W-League.

“I played with Sofia and Kyra in the SSV for a season and they’re both really great players as well as people,” she said.

“I think it’s achievable to be like them, so I’m aspiring to be like them. Learning off them has been good.”