In 2000, looking to elevate her game and sharpen her skills further, she spent a year playing overseas at Barnet Ladies FC in London and represented Middlesex County. She captained Adelaide City from 2001-2007.
Intuitive goal scorers in football are renowned, highly valued players in any competition around the world and are hugely popular with the fans.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Pele are instantly recognised names for that very reason. The trio remain at the top of the world’s goal scoring tallies.
Lia Augimeri developed a great technical ability combined with intuition around goal, leading her to be the foremost goal scorer in the Women’s Premier League in 1999, 2001, 2004, and 2005.
Further to that, she also won the Player of the Year in the Women’s Premier League in 1998, 1999 and 2001.
In short, around the turn of the century, Lia Augimeri was the outright dominant player in women’s football in this state. In 2000, looking to sharpen her skills further, she spent a year playing overseas at Barnet Ladies FC in London and represented Middlesex County.
Having been identified as a talented junior, she was a part of the SA Sports Institute scholarship program and would accordingly go on to represent SA in the senior state team and also Adelaide Sensation in the Women’s National League.
In February 2002, her sharpness around goal was again on show, scoring a rare and memorable hattrick against Victoria in the Women’s National League. In that same season, she was the competition’s third highest goal scorer.
It wasn’t to be that once she retired as a player, she would step away from the game. Lia Augimeri was inducted into the Football SA Hall of Fame in 2017 for her contribution as a “player, coach, administrator and manager”.
People who show such commitment to their sport in any number of roles and responsibilities – usually volunteer roles at that – are enormously valued.
At Adelaide City, the club she captained from 2001-2007, Lia Augimeri was also inducted as a club life member along with Franca Di Bartolo, the first two females to achieve this honour in the long history of the club.
