Back on their home field, they thumped West Canberra Wanderers FC 6-1 on Sunday.

Grace Gill made her return to the NPL competition for Deakin, fresh off her first minutes of the season on Thursday.

Coming off a mid-week 3-1 defeat at the hands of Canberra Olympic FC in the Federation Cup semi-final, Gill said they needed to refocus and get a good result.

And that they did.

"It's really important for a team to manage a loss the right way, and I think it speaks a lot about how you respond to those moments as a playing group," she said.

"For us as a group, it was about how we came back together and played against the Wanderers. Who, historically, has been a really tricky squad.

"We needed to go into Sunday's match really assertively and pick our heads up from what was a tough result on Thursday night."

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Things started shakily, with the visitors opening the scoring five minutes in with a goal of the year contender.

Ginger Oliver won the ball about 30 metres from the goal line, as Croatia tried to play out, and chipped the goalkeeper with a world class strike.

Croatia responded 20 minutes later, with Gill making an immediate impact off the bench.

Krista Hagen threaded the striker in, before the number nine played a square ball to Brittany Palombi in the box. A Wanderers defender made a last ditch effort from behind to stop Palombi firing off a shot, and instead earned a penalty.

Palombi made no mistake from the spot, levelling the score 1-1.

Last season's golden boot made it 2-1 just before half time from the spot again.

The third came via another Palombi and Gill combination, the number 11 fired off a shot and Gill was there to tap it home off the save.

Next was Sienna Bernie, then Palombi secure her hat-trick and took another for goodluck to make it 6-1.

They were without skipper, and centre back, Alice Churchill who went down in the final minutes of Thursday's loss.

But regained defender Rhiannon Fensom, after her one-match suspension for a professional foul.

When Alice goes down, it's never a good sign because she's so tough and she's so resilient," Gill said.

"She'll go and get whatever she needs to get checked out in the way of scans and MRIs and we're hoping for the best but it's always concerning when one of your best players and someone who's so important to the club does go down like that."

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