THE Swan Hill men’s soccer team will be looking to qualify for their third straight Bendigo Amateur Soccer League division 2 Super Cup grand final when they play Golden City White in Sunday’s first semi-final.
The Swans will go into the knockout match favourites, having gone through the home-and-away season unbeaten, including dual 4-1 wins over Sunday’s opponents in rounds 7 and 11.
It will be the first step towards Super Cup redemption for Swan Hill, who suffered a 4-2 loss to La Trobe University in last year’s grand final, having enjoyed a week off in the first week of the finals.
With the loser eliminated from this point onwards, the Swans can ill-afford any mis-steps, according to coach Tony Di Palma, with the Swans also facing an injury crisis ahead of Sunday’s all-important clash.
“We need to keep a level head as I’ve said in previous weeks, because Sunday is effectively an elimination final in that if we lose, we’re out,” Di Palma told The Guardian this week.
“The boys are excited, even though there is a bit of trepidation there for some of the younger boys as they don’t know what to expect because it’s finals and finals are always a different game.
“Unfortunately we’ve lost Jake Cameron and Ben Muir-Howie to injury, so that is a bit of a blow.
“That’s not to say that we’re going in undermanned, but they are both experienced players that have played some good finals football in the past, which will make it a little bit harder.
“But that just means that the team needs to gel and do what they do best, back each other up and keep the formation that we’ve set.
“They all have their roles and if they play those roles, hopefully it develops into a winning game for us.
“We know we have a talented team, 14 wins straight says that the boys can play a really good brand of football when they put their heads to it and they gel as a team.”
Despite having not played for two weeks, Swan Hill will go in confident with a new formation unveiled in their last match of the season against second placed La Trobe University resulted in a 6-1 win.
Conner Brown was the main beneficiary on the score sheet of the change, with the striker scoring a brace and taking his season tally to 27 goals – seven more than Border Raiders FC’s Joel Fataolisia.
“Our midfield will be the key to success,” Di Palma said.
“Our formation will be a little bit different this time to when we last played them (Golden City), we’re going to play three in the back and four in the midfield and use Cooper (Fox) as an attacking midfielder to try and feed it to Conner (Brown).
“We have Joseph (Costa), Gareth (Johansen), Jason (Stokes) and Steve (Whittaker) in the midfield, so it’s a strong midfield, but in saying that, we have to be careful when you play as a three in the back.
“It can be an advantage but it can also be a disadvantage in that it can leave you exposed at times.
“We’ll keep that formation for the first 10 to 15 minutes and see what they (Golden City) are doing right and maybe what we’re doing wrong.
“We want to score in the first 10 or 15 minutes as we did against La Trobe, which put them on the back foot pretty quick.
“I think it kind of shocked them a bit using that formation, I think they expected us to use a bit more defensive at the start and work into the game, but we’ll be trying to hit them hard right from the start.”
Swan Hill will play Golden City this Sunday at Shadforth Park, North Bendigo from 3pm, with the winner to progress through to the Super Cup grand final against either La Trobe University Red or Strathfieldsaye Colts United FC.
