Hornsby Heights hungry for Champions success
Northern Suburbs’ Hornsby Heights are hoping that their second trip to Valentine Sports Park in as many months will be a much happier one as they take on the Camden Tigers in the Grade 12 PUMA Champion of Champions final on Sunday.
Head Coach Malcolm Waldock and his young chargers were finalists at this year’s Cheryl Salisbury Cup in July, narrowly missing out on the big prize, after going down to local rivals Northbridge FC in a tense encounter.
The game ended 0-0 after normal time but Northbridge FC came home with the Cup after defeating Hornsby Heights 3-1 on penalties.
“It’s been the only blip for us this year,” Waldock told Football NSW.
“It came down to penalties which is always a lottery in football and even though the girls tried extremely hard to get the win, we lost out to our friendly rivals in the end.”
It’s been an otherwise flawless year for the club as silverware has followed the side taking out the Northern Suburbs Association Grade 12 Diamond League undefeated as well as lifting the Kanga Cup trophy in Canberra.
“This journey started for all of us two years ago at our first training session when we worked on our motto about focusing on development.
“The girls have an extremely good work ethic and train really hard but are not scared to make mistakes as that is part of the growth mindset.
“It’s been a great year so far and we are hoping we can end it on a high with a victory this Sunday.”
Waldock stated that the Diamond League run by the Northern Suburbs Football Association also played a role in the continual development of the squad.
“It must be said that the Diamond League in the Northern Suburbs is highly competitive and we feel that we come across some tough teams on a weekly basis.
“It’s definitely a very strong competition, one of the toughest in NSW, which has worked in our favour giving the girls some hefty opposition.”
Macarthur Association’s Camden Tigers are Hornsby Heights’ final opponents for the year and they’ve performed rather well recently defeating Football South Coast’s Shellharbour 4-3 to earn a spot in this Sunday’s big match.
This will be the second time both clubs will face each other as the two met earlier in the year where Hornsby Heights defeated the Tigers 2-0 in the State Cup qualifying matches.
“Even though we beat them earlier in the year the match was pretty even.
“They’re a tough outfit, quite physical and have some outstanding representative players on their books so we are expecting a really good game.
“I hope that our style of game which is based on possession and high passing will hold up and steer us to victory.”
Match Details
Sunday 18th October (8:45am)
Hornsby Heights v Camden Tigers
Valentine Sports Park 2
-By Mark Stavroulakis
