Sep 23, 2026 · 9 min · 8 segments
Poletti is joined by Sydney FC coach James Slaveski to discuss the 2026/27 A-League Women season, Sydney FC defender Poppy Channing, player development, and more in this interview. Please don't…
James SlaveskiGuestPolettiHost
We've got a lot of young players that have had a bit of a taste of football last year in terms of this level.
And also now with some of the foreign players coming in to add a bit of an extra dimension to our squad.
It's an exciting kind of period of time and looking forward to what lies ahead.
The women's competition has always traditionally skewed younger than the men's competition has, but we're sort of seeing, you know, the trend has been the players across both leagues are getting younger and younger.
How are you as a coach sort of, you know, able to balance that, I guess, knowing that, you know, particularly on the women's side of things, you're balancing players with HSC, you're balancing them with year 11, year 10, all these, you know, sorts of challenges that come along with that stage of life as well.
I think we need to support them as much as possible, particularly the girls that are still at school.
We've got players that it's not only their schooling in particular as well, it's their life outside of football and school as well.
And we need to remember that they're only kids and they're only teenagers and we need to give them as much of an opportunity to live a normal life as well outside of here as well.
Yeah, overall, like the balance is there, but also when they're in here in the building, they're excellent professionals.
And I think you see that on the weekend when they play, they perform at a really high level and you can't do that if you're not.
We've got a lot of young players that have had a bit of a taste of football last year in terms of this level.
And also now with some of the foreign players coming in to add a bit of an extra dimension to our squad.
It's an exciting kind of period of time and looking forward to what lies ahead.
The women's competition has always traditionally skewed younger than the men's competition has, but we're sort of seeing, you know, the trend has been the players across both leagues are getting younger and younger.
How are you as a coach sort of, you know, able to balance that, I guess, knowing that, you know, particularly on the women's side of things, you're balancing players with HSC, you're balancing them with year 11, year 10, all these, you know, sorts of challenges that come along with that stage of life as well.
I think we need to support them as much as possible, particularly the girls that are still at school.
We've got players that it's not only their schooling in particular as well, it's their life outside of football and school as well.
And we need to remember that they're only kids and they're only teenagers and we need to give them as much of an opportunity to live a normal life as well outside of here as well.
Yeah, overall, like the balance is there, but also when they're in here in the building, they're excellent professionals.
And I think you see that on the weekend when they play, they perform at a really high level and you can't do that if you're not.
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