The Maitland Mustangs women’s team will look to extend their history-making run of success this weekend when they meet the fourth-placed Hornsby Spiders on Saturday night.
The Mustangs made history the week before last when they outplayed the Sutherland Sharks to notch up a hat-trick of wins, their first since 2000.
The Mustangs women will go into this week’s game as underdogs on paper, but will get a boost from an increasingly vocal home crowd at the Maitland Federation Centre.
The Mustangs will be without Opals recruit Natalie Porter, but coach Mark Wawszkowicz said his side had not relied on the talents of one player to claim victory in previous fixtures and noted that their opposition were also without their marquee recruit.
“Hornsby will lose the services of Alicia Poto just as we will lose the services of Natalie Porter to Opals commitments,” Wawszkowicz said.
“We may not get Natalie again, the Olympics are coming and she will probably go to them.
“I think the biggest thing about having Natalie was that the team saw that she really just does the simple things, does them well and does them repeatedly.
“We possibly would have won both those games (that Porter played) even without her.”
But Porter will not be the only loss to the Mustangs as a State division clash in Wollongong this weekend will see them bleed young talent as well.
But Wawszkowicz again threw his support behind his remaining players and commended the depth of talent in his squad.
“We have players like Mikaela Domkins, Haylee McCrohon and Charlotte Bull who have been playing really well,” he said.
“We still have pretty much the same starting five.
“Those players will probably play the whole game. I’m not really worried about fatigue because we are a pretty fit side.
“Hornsby don’t really have a lot of depth either, they really only have about five or six players who do most of their work.”
The next step for the Mustangs according to Wawszkowicz is making the Waratah League play-off, and in light of their recent form he said this was not off the agenda.
“Even if we didn’t win this weekend, there are enough games left against lower-placed teams for us to make the play-offs,” he said.
“It would just be nice to beat one of the top teams.