Twelve months after the Phoenix's men set up a temporary base in Wollongong, the club's inaugural A-League Women's team will now call the Illawarra home.
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The Wellington women's side landed in the region on Monday, where they will remain based for the 2021/22 season. The side is currently training at Albert Butler Park and will play their home games at WIN Stadium.
The Phoenix men's team was based in the Gong last season, training at University of Wollongong. The side will be based again in NSW, this time in Chatswood, but play out of WIN Stadium.
Wellington women's head coach Gemma Lewis hopes the lessons that the club learned from last season will put her side in good stead this campaign.
"We're settling in well so far, it's been a crammed-in couple of days. And I'm still excited to explore a bit more of Wollongong," she said.
"But having the men's team be here before has been really helpful. It's helped in terms of making sure the girls are sorted with accommodation and what they need, and we've also got good physio and medical (support) here on the ground. But it's also helped us with making sure we're in a good training set-up, so we're lucky that the Wollongong Wolves have welcomed us in.
"We're really hoping that Wollongong will embrace us, as they did with the men's team. And so far we've had a really good reception and everyone that we've bumped in to has been really good."
In September 2020, local NPL club Illawarra Stingrays said they would back plans to have a Wellington A-League Women's team based in Wollongong. The Phoenix had flagged their intentions to field a side in Australia's biggest women's competition, which became a reality 12 months later.
Lewis now hopes they can build a strong bond with the Stingrays.
"We've definitely opened communication with them. We were maybe looking at a game at some stage, but at the moment we're looking at potentially playing some boys teams," she said.
"But the Stingrays have been really helpful and it's a relationship we want to continue. We're pretty lucky that they're really supportive of what we're doing."
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