Australia ladies play male teams to prepare for Nigeria

Ahead of team's clash with the Super Falcons of Nigeria, Australian goalkeeper Melissa Barbieri has revealed the 'Matildas' held practice games against male youth teams to prepare specifically for Nigeria at the World Cup due to their skilful and unpredictable style of play.


Nigeria played very few games after winning the African Women's Championship in October 2014, so the Australians had limited opportunities to analyze and study their Group D opponents before the World Cup.

Strong, quick, agile and with a penchant for taking on opponents, there was little more knowledge available to the Australian coaching staff about the African side. Consequently, the Matildas specifically played games and trained against elite male teenage teams while in camp in Australia.

Some members of the Matildas were still nursing minor wounds and cuts in early May from those games and Barbieri is hopeful those bruising games have prepared them to overcome the entertaining Nigerians.

"It is very difficult to predict but we did a lot of training in the beginning leading up to the World Cup with a lot of boys teams and the instruction was to play off the cuff," Barbieri said.

 "We sort of had that in our mindset that African nations are very, very good footballers but do play their own style and brand that we rarely get to see and usually when we get to see them it is in a World Cup. So, hopefully we've done enough practice for those sorts of things with the boys back home."