THE senior women of the Myrtleford Savoy Soccer Club will take what they can from their weekend’s 0-6 loss to Melrose.

The match was always going to be a challenge for the young and upcoming Savoy women, against second placed and likely finalists Melrose who are even on points at the top of the ladder.

Melrose’s ball movement and connections across the park were simply too good for Savoy to negate, but co-coach Tom Scott is taking the positives out of witnessing a star team first-hand.

“Melrose are a good team, they’ll be there at the end of the year with Hotspurs, and we took that into account and gave them the respect they deserve,” he said.

“They’re a good outfit, they move the ball around pretty well, how they attack is really professional, and they’re got a really good connection amongst the team.

“It was a hard day for the girls, but they took it all in stride.

“A lot of our girls are playing reserves and seniors this year, so to be able to be exposed to so much football at an early age, we know their development’s going to be really impressive in a couple of years.”

Savoy will take the weekend off with the league-wide Kings Birthday bye, before diving into Wodonga Heart at home next week.

The time off should allow some of the injured Savoy players to return to playing condition.

“We’ve seemed to have the injury bug pretty bad in the past couple of weeks, but this was the first week we walked away with no injuries, so that’s good,” Scott said.

“We’re still looking at six players within that three to five week return window, and we’ve got a couple of girls hopefully back in two weeks depending on scans.

“Now we’ve set up with most of our season being back at Myrtleford bar one game, hopefully that can help us out because we know the ground well and we can control it on our terms.”