Home fortress motivation for Steel
April 16, 2026
Motivation won’t be lacking for the Ascot Park Hotel Southern Steel on Saturday.
If a return to home court at its ILT Stadium Southland fortress isn’t enough to ignite the fight, redemption for the 13-goal drubbing suffered in the opening round of the ANZ Premiership sure is.
Given the unwavering commitment demonstrated at training this week, head coach Wendy Frew expects a stronger performance against the Stars.
“Everyone is putting in the hard yards. Our focus has been ball retention and just finding ways to create turnovers,” she said.
“We learned a lot from the Tactix game. Obviously, we were disappointed in our performance and we can do a lot better than that, but the main learnings for us as an attack unit is just to connect and keep to our structures.
“We had a really high turnover count so it’s about cherishing that ball and really keeping that possession with ball in hand. Defensively, we weren’t quite connected at times and probably just needed to alter our setups and structures throughout the game.”
Despite the score line, there were positives to chalk up.
“Really happy with our first and second phase. We got some great depth on that and onto that circle edge with some nice positioning.
“Carys (Stythe) is always grinding it out and getting us lots of touches. And when we committed to our CPD structures we gained ball, but at times we didn’t so a big learning there.”
The Stars presented a new challenge to contend with.
“What it will take to beat the Stars is us committing to our structures and being on the same page attack-wise and d-wise. Just working for each other – every single loose ball we’re hungry, we’re active on d, we’re running clean lines on attack. Just that general belief in each other and that we can get it over the line,” Frew said.
“We do have a lot of respect for the Stars. They have a very good line up and they’ve come off a win so they’ll certainly be confident after their first game performance.”
Home turf packed with the Steel faithful would provide a welcome edge.
“The girls are really excited to play at home. We know the crowd is our eighth player when it matters most. They are always so committed. They show up for us and they’re incredibly loyal,” Frew said.
“To be able to play at home in front of our fans and families will be really special. For those players who haven’t actually played at Stadium Southland before, they hear the others talking about how cool it is, how loud the crowd is and how awesome the atmosphere is so they are looking forward to that.
“We’re really hoping Southland get behind us and we get a great crowd there to really lift us so we can bank those three points that we really need. We can’t afford to start the season with losses on the board or we’ll be chasing our tail and relying on other results like we did last year. So for us, it’s really key that we put a good performance in and live up to our potential.”
Tickets for Saturday’s 4pm game are on sale at www.southernsteel.co.nz
