Youngster Shania Seton stepped into the NPLW side and bagged a goal of the year contender in Croatia's 3-1 win.

Jennifer Bisset opened the scoring for the visitors, against Belconnen United FC, 13 minutes into the contest at McKellar Park.

Krista Hagen's corner was cleared by a defensive header, before the unmarked midfielder beat a rushing defender and struck it with her left boot.

The visitors second came courtesy of Seton's brilliance. Croatia could not break the final line of defence down the right hand side, and switched play through Bisset.

She found the striker's feet, who then fired off a floating shot - from the top corner of the 18-yard - to make it 2-0.

Croatia's coach Zoran Glavinic praised the teenager's shot.

"We gave her an opportunity and she took it," he said.

"That was a pretty good shot. So it was very, very pleasing and she did some other good stuff too."

MORE IN CANBERRA SPORT:

Bisset made it 3-0, and slotted her second goal, just before half time off second-phase play from a corner.

Bella Barac played the midfielder in, past a ball-watching defence, to go one-on-on with United's goalkeeper. Bisset secured her brace, but it may have had a helping touch over the line from her teammate Dianne Wilson.

Both side's fielded new goalkeepers for the round five fixture, with Croatia's Natasja Vasta suffering a broken ankle last week, and Belconnen's goalkeeper Jayla Murphy unavailable due to a wedding.

The homeside put striker Reilly Yuen into goal for the first time, utilising her experience in futsal goalkeeping. Belconnen's coach Scott Conlon said he was very happy with his side's efforts given they had players away, and out due to injury or COVID.

And praised Yuen's performance.

"We were still competitive with what most people would call the best team in the league. So for me as a coach, with quite a number of players out, I'm happy," he said.

"Some of the girls were a bit shy to start with, and showed them too much respect.

"Maybe we could have tackled a bit harder or been a bit more on the front foot ... but as the game went on, the girls were less bothered and went back to doing what they're good at."

Croatia went to 10 players in the 71^st minute after losing central defender Rhiannon Fensom for a professional foul.

She accidentally clipped Belconnen striker Keira Bobbin, as she edged towards a one-on-one battle with the visitors' goalkeeper, but as the last defender was shown a red card.

Talia Backhouse capitalised on the subsequent freekick on the edge of the box. The skipper's strike took a deflection off the five-player wall to draw one back, 3-1.

Despite the outcome, the Croatian coach was not fully satisfied.

"It's three points in the bag but I'm really disappointed with the second half performance," Glavinic said.

"I'm not sure what changed, we wanted to kick on and show our dominance but we didn't. We couldn't make two passes, it was really, really sloppy and the red card didn't help as well."

Round 5 NPL results:

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: