AFTER taking the weekend off, Wangaratta City FC’s senior women will play two matches in four days to crack into a massive block in the fixture.

The Lady Devils returned to the park last night in an FA Cup clash with Wodonga Diamonds, and will face them again on Sunday in the league competition – results from both matches will be published in Wednesday’s Chronicle.

The Albury Wodonga Football Association took the weekend off with the Easter long weekend, and the Lady Devils will not have another break for almost three months.

With the numbers and talent flourishing at the club, senior coach Terry Masters said his side was ready for the long haul.

“We’ve got a reasonable squad now, I think we’ve got about 30 players between the two sides, so if people want to take the weekend off, they can,” he said.

“It’s getting harder and harder to pick the squad, let alone the starting 11.

“The players we’ve picked up this week, they’ve played at the club for a while and they’re quality, so that adds to the top which pushes things down, which means it lifts the div two girls.

“I’m not too worried about that, it’s actually good to get some game time into people.”

Their opponents in both the FA Cup and league fixtures, Diamonds have enjoyed a strong start to the season, including a 4-2 win over Albury United in their opening Cup match, as well as two wins in the Sunday competition (6-0 vs Myrtleford, 5-1 vs Wodonga Heart).

Masters said he backed the Wangaratta game style to provide more than enough attacking and defensive options.

“I don’t know too much about Diamonds, I think they’ve had a couple of results, but their whole junior program is pretty good, so you’d expect them to be competitive,” he said.

“It’ll be interesting to see how we go, they should test us a bit.

“It’ll be similar to what we did against Albury City, where we moved the ball around, pass the ball through the midfield.

“I’ve noticed in a couple of games I’ve watched, not just us but a lot of sides will put it long, get it out of their defence and up to their forward line as quick as possible, whereas we’re working on moving it through our midfield.

“If we do that, it’ll open up things, means we can get behind our defence, get the ball into the attacking areas where we can score.

“We’ve got enough goal scorers in our team, I’d be very surprised if we’re kept to zero.

“Probably the hardest thing, depending on what the result is from the FA Cup, is how we turn up on Sunday.

“You can have a good win then turn off, or you could have a bad result and it could reduce the confidence - I think, with having a big squad, we can make sure that doesn’t happen.”

The Lady Devils take on Wodonga Diamonds at home this Sunday, with the division two match from 9.50am and the division one game from 11.20am.