📍 Wanderers Football Park, Rooty Hill
🕖 Friday 31 October 2025, 7:00pm AEDT
The Ninja A-League Women doesn’t ease into the season — it erupts into it.
Friday night under the Rooty Hill lights, Western Sydney Wanderers and Perth Glory collide in a clash that’s part redemption arc, part psychological war. The Wanderers, fresh off the humiliation of a wooden spoon, host a Perth side that travelled east with a simmering hunger to break their away curse.
Both fanbases have spent the off-season muttering the same thing: this time, it has to be different.
For the Wanderers, this is a restart born from local soil — a new identity crafted in the heartbeat of Western Sydney’s suburbs. For Perth Glory, it’s about flight distance and fortitude — an away-day exorcism years in the making.
This isn’t just another season opener. It’s a mirror held up to two clubs asking the same question in very different ways: what are we now?
The Wanderers: Pride Rebuilt Brick by Brick
Last season, Western Sydney Wanderers Women were the punchline nobody wanted. Bottom of the table. Four wins from 23. Forty-six goals conceded.
But under the watchful eye of Geoff Abrahams, the new WSW Women head coach — and architect of the club’s homegrown revolution — there’s been a noticeable shift.
Abrahams isn’t a man for grand slogans. His work speaks in accents of discipline and belonging. As both senior manager and technical director of the Girls Academy, he’s bet the club’s future on homegrown youth. Nine academy graduates are set to feature across the new campaign — a tangible symbol of Western Sydney’s cultural backbone.
“Their progression signals the start of an exciting journey for the Wanderers Girls Academy,” the club said. “They set the standard for the next generation of homegrown stars.”
In an A-League increasingly filled with imports, this feels refreshing — and risky.
The Wanderers membership campaign has doubled down on this community-first narrative, urging fans to “believe in the badge again.” It’s more than a slogan; it’s a plea.
Friday night’s home crowd won’t come for pyrotechnics or platitudes. They’ll come to see if this so-called youth movement has any bite.
The Glory: Flight Miles and Mental Fortitude
Across 3,300 kilometres of continent, Perth Glory manager Stephen Peters has built his own creed. One word defines it: resolve.
Perth were tenth last season, undone not by lack of quality, but by geography. Their home form was steady; their away form, cursed. Peters has made no secret that this opener is the fixture he’s circled in red since preseason.
“We’d be elated with an away win,” he said. “We’ve spoken about it since the first kick of preseason — we don’t want to leave excuses in the tank.”
He calls it “an arm-wrestle type of game.” Translation: Glory will scrap for every blade of grass.
Perth’s squad this season is less glamour, more grit. Veterans like Isobel Dalton, the club’s captain and reigning Most Glorious Player Award winner, anchor the midfield with leadership and bite. Susan Phonsongkham, their most dangerous finisher, adds local dynamism, while new striker Rola Badawiya arrives with proven A-League scoring touch.
Behind them, the evergreen Casey Dumont — now a 150-game veteran and former Wanderer — guards the net. Dumont’s career is one long highlight reel of survival: a lacerated liver, torn ACL, ruptured Achilles. She’s seen worse than Rooty Hill.
If this turns ugly, she’ll thrive.
The Emotional Undercard: Bronte, Julia, and the Nine
Every A-League game carries stories between the lines. This one overflows.
For Perth, forward Bronte Trew faces her old club — a reverse transfer laced with tension. There’s something especially poetic about beginning your new journey against the ghosts of your old locker room. Expect her to play like she’s trying to burn an old jersey off her back.
Then there’s Julia Sardo, another Perth recruit. Once a reliable defender at Western United, she almost quit football after what she called “dramas” at her old club. “I feared for my career,” she admitted. Friday night isn’t just a debut — it’s her act of defiance.
And hovering over everything: those nine Wanderers Academy graduates.
They’re not just players — they’re the public face of the rebuild. Every one of them embodies the club’s decision to believe in itself again.
The Tactical Tightrope
Abrahams and Peters represent two sides of the same football coin — philosophy versus pragmatism.
Abrahams’ Wanderers are built on pride and possession. He wants the team to feel the pulse of the local crowd, to play like they represent the sprawl of Sydney’s west. Expect a compact 4-2-3-1, with the likes of Wang Ying anchoring the backline and Yuan Cong offering pace on the break. The Chinese duo bring international pedigree and calm to a defence that leaked goals like a sieve last year.
Perth, by contrast, are a coach’s team. Peters’ sides are mentally drilled, defensively narrow, and counterpunching. He’s fine with letting the opponent have the ball — he just wants his team to break faster, harder, meaner. His Perth Glory game plan is built on ugly efficiency.
He’s already called this one “tight.” Translation: it could end 1-0 either way.
If it does, expect Twitter to light up with Perth Glory score updates and plenty of “away win at last” celebrations.
Key Duels
Phonsongkham vs Wang Ying: Experience versus technique. The Glory forward’s guile and movement against the Wanderers’ new Chinese centre-back.
Isobel Dalton vs Janae DeFazio: A midfield collision of control. Dalton’s captain’s aura against DeFazio’s raw hunger to dominate her home debut.
Bronte Trew vs Cerne: The ex-Wanderer versus the new wall. If Trew scores, it’ll sting twice as hard for the hosts.
Expect Perth’s right wing to be the battle zone. Phonsongkham and Trew will test the Wanderers’ defensive chemistry early — especially with the youth influx.
The Form and the Ghosts
Western Sydney’s formline reads like a confession note: five games, four losses, one draw, eleven goals conceded. The final stretch of the 2024/25 season was pure punishment — 1-3 vs Canberra, 0-1 vs Victory, 0-2 vs Sydney, 0-1 vs Perth.
For a squad that lost its top scorer Sienna Saveska and Julie Dolan Medalist Sophie Harding, this opener is less about entertainment and more about survival with pride intact.
Perth’s pre-season wasn’t much better — a 0-2 defeat to the WA State Team — but Peters won’t care. He’s said it before: “We build from mentality, not from results.”
Both sides are chasing ghosts. Both think they’ve exorcised them. Friday will tell us who’s lying.
The Setting: Rooty Hill under the Lights
There’s something poetic about this match being played at Wanderers Football Park — intimate, local, raw. Rated 3 out of 5 by players in recent surveys, it’s no fortress, but it’s theirs.
And on this Halloween Friday night, the club’s marketing team are going full “Spooktacular Season Opener.” Expect glow sticks, DJ sets, and kids in Wanderers face paint. The crowd won’t hit A-League Men levels, but what it lacks in size it’ll make up for in loyalty.
Because Western Sydney doesn’t forget its own.
The same can be said for Perth fans — a group defined by resilience. When border closures once forced their team to relocate 2,500 miles away, they didn’t complain. They waited. They endured. They wore purple like defiance.
That’s the beauty of this fixture. It’s two football cultures built on pain and patience colliding under floodlights.
Wanderers vs Glory: More Than a Game
Zoom out and this match mirrors where women’s football in Australia stands today — between hope and hardship, momentum and growing pains.
The Ninja A-League Women has rebranded, refreshed, and expanded. The crowds are growing. The Matildas’ global impact still echoes. This opening fixture isn’t just symbolic — it’s a statement of intent for the entire competition.
Both the WSW Women and Perth Glory have been there since the early, uncertain days. They’ve lived through half-empty stands, sponsorship droughts, and fragmented schedules. To see them headline the 2025/26 opener — with live coverage, fan activations, and full academy integration — is its own quiet victory for the league.
In an era where A-League news often skews towards the men’s game, this fixture is women’s football saying: we’ve built our own stage now, and it’s time you watched.
Prediction: Fireworks Optional, Emotion Guaranteed
If there’s justice in football, both clubs deserve a story worth telling again.
The Wanderers want redemption. Perth want release. Both have earned the right to dream — but only one can start clean.
A stalemate laced with tension, a teaser for what’s to come. Dalton to open the scoring; DeFazio to equalise on debut.
Not a thriller, but a statement — that both sides have shed their old skin.
This match isn’t just about points. It’s about proof.
Proof that Western Sydney’s new homegrown identity can translate from philosophy to performance.
Proof that Perth’s endless travel doesn’t mean eternal excuses.
Proof that the Ninja A-League Women has matured into something fierce, layered, and proudly Australian.
Under the Friday night lights, we’ll find out which side learned more from its scars.
Because in this league — pride, pain, and miles are the real currency. And both these teams are rich in all three.
doragon sports 