La Fiamma starts season with road draw against league favourites and newcomers Bayswater City

Ugle Fabrications La Fiamma have got over their first hurdle of the season after coming home with a draw against a league favourite in round one.

The Geraldton side got their quest for promotion in the Belt Up Amateur League under way with their first game against a tough opponent on Sunday.

The Reds travelled to face the newcomers in the division, Bayswater City, who were promoted from division four after going 22-0 last season.

Reds captain Lachlan Gray said the team was well aware of how hard the match-up was going to be, with teams that get promoted usually being the favourites to win the league.

“We were going into the game thinking this is going to be our hardest game of the season,” he said.

“They’ve been tipped as comp favourites, everyone’s aware they have an MPL side that is successful … they’ve got really good backing.

“We knew they were going to be a really difficult team, if not the hardest team to play against this season.”

Despite the tough challenge, La Fiamma came out with guns blazing and got the jump on Bayswater with a quick score.

“We scored very early … we got our first goal maybe 15 minutes into the first half,” Gray said.

“Hayden Boffey already had a good effort around the goalkeeper … five minutes later we saw our first goal when Hayden caught the defender sleeping.”

While they have retained the core team, La Fiamma saw new additions step up in game one.

Goalkeeper Braiden Paige made his debut and their newest team member from Newcastle helped out in the win.

“We just kept the pedal on for most of the game … Johnny Song, our new player, played incredibly well in the midfield and really controlled the midfield, ran all game to basically make sure we were in control in that middle,” Gray said.

A late score let Bayswater tie the game up and the Reds came away with a 1-1 draw, a result they were happy with to start their season.

Now they look ahead to this week’s match-up against another side that has moved up from division four in Swan Valley, but they come as an unknown quantity.

“We don’t know a lot about Swan Valley, they obviously have come up from division four … any team coming up from a lower division, they’re going to be a team with something to prove,” Gray said.

There is history between the clubs, with Swan Valley being the first team the Reds ever faced when they joined the Perth league back in 1990.

While teams aim to win every game, Gray said the Geraldton side tempered their expectations when travelling to Perth.

“Every game away from home for us is always a challenge, realistically we’d like to draw away games … we want to make sure we’re setting our season up for the long haul,” he said.

La Fiamma travel to Perth this weekend when they take on Swan Valley SC at the Swan Valley Sporting Club on Sunday, April 21 with kick-off at 3pm.