Desiree Ellis banking on Costa Rica to sharpen Banyana Banyana for Sweden

Banyana have left their base in Wellington and travelled via a chartered flight to Christchurch, where they will square off with the 36th-ranked nation.

Costa Rica are also looking to fine tune their team ahead of their World Cup Group C campaign, which will feature Banyana’s neighbours Zambia’s Copper Queens.

"Look, there are a lot of similarities between Sweden and some of the stuff they do, so it will also really challenge us. It's our first game since everybody's come to camp," said Ellis.

"So, it's a good test for us to see what we still need to work on in the next couple of days as we prepare for Sweden, and everything we've done in training is for that [first game], but given the similarities [with Costa Rica] this will really test us."

After the debacle at Tsakane Stadium earlier this month, this is a chance for Ellis and her technical team to finalise their starting line-up ahead of the opener against Sweden. 

"We always put out the training session and on match day minus-one, you almost know who's going to start and who's not, but sometimes there's someone who raises their hand really high.

"We've done it before where we've changed [the line-up] because someone actually showed us something better, so it's not cast in stone.

"But we have to also look how we can give some players certain minutes because they came in at different times and they are recovering from long trips, etc. so we have to make sure we give players minutes but also keep them fresh."