The Central Coast Mariners Academy made it 3 straight wins on Saturday afternoon, after they defeated Sprit FC 4-0. The Mariners come into this weekends game against Marconi Stallions in red hot form, scoring 15 goals and conceding none
With the Stallions sitting at the top of the table though, it will be a tough test for our boys this weekend, as we head to Marconi Stadium, with kickoff set for Sunday afternoon at 3pm.
It wasn’t an ideal game for the Academy in the reverse fixture, when they went down 3-1 to the Stallions at Pluim Park in Round 1 of this season, despite being in the contest for long periods.
The PS4 NPL2 ladder is very tight, and a win for the Mariners cold see them jump as high as 3rd, up from 8th right now.
The Mariners Academy defence will have to be tight however, facing a potent attack which features Mirjan Pavlovic, Sean Rooney and Marko Jesic, who have all played in either the A-League or various competitions abroad. Rooney (13), Jesic (5) and Pavlovic (5) are all on fire in front of goal this year, scoring a combined 23 goals in the first thirteen rounds of the competition.
The Stallions may have the NPL2 ‘big three’ but the Yellow and Navy have in-form strikers Duncan Stewart and Brenton Fox. The two Mariners strikers have put together 22 goals so far this season, with Fox scoring 7 goals in his past 2 gamers.
Since joining the Mariners at the start of last year Foxtel National Youth League competition from the Western Sydney Wanderers, Fox has been heavily involved in a large part of the Academy goals, we caught up with him this week.
“Marconi is always a tough match no matter what form you’re in, coach Ben Can will have a way he will want us to play after he studies the oppositions game from last weekend. If we can execute the game plan it will go a long way to us getting the 3 points again this weekend.”
When asked about his own form, Fox was happy with his current run of games but knows its a team performance that will get them over the line.
“It is always good to be scoring goals and doing my part for the team. The main thing for me though is that we are climbing the table and getting the results we should be getting. At the end of the day we should be playing finals football and I think that is definitely achievable at this point.
“It was a tough start to the year, we didn’t have much luck in front of goal and were conceding scrappy goals that were putting us out of the game. These past 3 games we have tightened the screws at the back and kept 3 clean sheets. We always believe that if we keep clean sheets we will win because we are confident we can score goals in every game.
“We are confident we can beat every team in the competition, we are training well and if we turn up on the day we know we will give the opposition a real test. To get another 3 points this weekend would be great, it would go a long way in our run up the ladder and to defeat a first placed Marconi would put us in a good position going into the back end of the year “ Fox concluded.
Our 18’s kept their unbeaten streak alive on the weekend, defeating Spirit FC 4-1, while the Under 20’s remained inside the top three with a 2-all draw.
Kick off times for this weekends games against the Stallions are as follows:
Sunday 4 June 2017, Marconi Stadium
- U18’s: 11am
- U20’s: 1pm
- First Grade: 3pm
