Durham United F.C. 2 - North Mississauga Panthers 0

Sun May 24
Written By: Staff, League1

Durham United opened an historic League1 Ontario 2015 season - marking the beginning of the first ever women's semi-professional league on Canadian soil - with a 2-0 win over opponents North Mississauga Panthers. Maddie Iozzi and Taylor Potts were the goalscorers on the day.

"The first goal by Taylor settled us down and allowed us to play with more composure and confidence," said Durham head coach Tony Laferrara. "And we defended very well as a team… but could not find a smooth rhythm when attacking, it was challenging."

"We were pretty confident before the game, however we quickly realized that Durham was a team with experience, whereas we are a very young team. In the first half they were extremely aggressive and we went down two goals on set plays," said North Mississauga assistant coach Trevor Bertrand. "[We] had a good pep talk at half time, asking the girls to settle and got back to our game of possession."

Laferrera picked out North Missisagua centre back Cachet Lue as the Panthers' player of the game, and singled out goalscorer Taylor Potts, as well as Kayla Desouza, as Durham's standouts.

Bertrand selected attacker Jenny Wolever as the Panthers' MVP.

"Jenny was able to penetrate the opposing defence on many occasions during the game and was a constant threat, but unfortunately was unable to finish," he added. "We created many goal scoring opportunities, including three breakaways, hitting one off the crossbar. We realized the other team was tiring and used our fitness to pressure them not allowing them one shot on goal in the second half. However we failed to capitalize on great scoring opportunities.

Both Durham and North Mississauga have home matches in the Matchweek 2 of League1 Ontario Women's Division, with DUFC hosting Vaughan Azzurri, and the Panthers taking on Woodbridge Strikers.