Six losses in the last seven league rounds have left Clayton South-based NPL 1 club Kingston City floundering in 12th spot and just four points above the bottom two NPL positions. For 36-year-old Kingston coach Nick Tolios, it’s probably been one of the toughest sequences of results he’s had to face since his 2013 appointment as senior coach. Tolios steered the club from the third tier into NPL 1 last season when the Reds finished a creditable ninth.

A comparison with their progress at the same stage last season shows they currently have five points less and have scored less than half as many goals.

Coach Tolios, speaking to Neos Kosmos after Kingston’s latest league loss, a 2-0 home defeat to South Melbourne on Monday evening, commented, “Second season in the NPL is always harder. And not to make any excuses, we’ve had a lot of injuries. For the last seven rounds, I’ve had six senior players out. We’re not a club or a team that can afford to have six senior players out, and then try to pick up results. Look we’ve played well, but inexperience at times has cost us in those games. And tonight, we were just not there. We weren’t hungry. We weren’t switched on in the first 10-15 minutes. Unfortunately we’ve got to lick our wounds and move on now.”

He went on to say they’ve had a tough season especially, now that they’ve lost captain Simo Jovanovic again – he was out after just 45 minutes.

Jovanovic’s injury is a blow for the Reds particularly because of the unavailability of experienced centre back Adrian Chiappetta due to injury. Chris Irwin and Cooper Lingard were also missing from the team which played South on Monday.


Tolios said, “We’ll have to wait and assess and see how those boys come back, but losing Simo Jovanovic tonight, it’s important to see how far off he’s going to be, because he’s already had seven weeks. So look. We’ve got to see what we can bring in in the (transfer) window. Unfortunately we’re not blessed to have a lot of money lying around in the war chest, so that we can go and buy whatever player we want. So we’ve just got to be smart and hopefully some of the boys can step up and we can start stringing some results together.”

As Tolios said, the Reds need to quickly regroup in the immediate aftermath of Monday’s disappointing home loss to South, because it doesn’t get any easier for the men from the Grange. The team travels to Olympic Village this Sunday to take on third placed Heidelberg, who are also missing key players through injury including Sean Ellis, Harry Noon, and Tom Cahill. Heidelberg, however, has the depth and experience to cover those injuries.

Kingston will then have to back up with a Rd 7 FFA Cup tie against NPL league leader Bentleigh Greens at home on Wednesday night.

The one bright note in Kingston’s season thus far has been its run in the FFA Cup qualifiers which has taken them to the brink of qualification for the national stage of the competition. If Kingston fans were expecting any favours from the Rd 7 FFA Cup qualifiers draw last Monday, they would have been disappointed, drawing the undefeated Bentleigh Greens, the most successful NPL team in the history of the FFA CUP.

The other Rd 7 FFA Cup matches are:

19 May Avondale V Richmond
30 May Port Melbourne Sharks v Moreland Zebras; Altona Magic v Northcote City.

The winners of each of these ties will join Heidelberg United as the group of five Victorian teams to go into the nationwide FFA Cup Rd of 32.

The winner of the Avondale v Richmond cup tie will also play Heidelberg United for a Dockerty Cup semifinal berth. The winners of the other three Rd 7 FFA Cup ties automatically gain a Dockerty Cup semi-final berth.