Coach Goran Lozanovski might be struggling with the loss of key players to rival teams, but there’s no backing down.
His team is young but capable, he says, and there’s nothing better than trial and error when finding what works best.
Sitting at a lowly ninth on the ladder, it’s been quite a different season for Northcote City. Premiers last year and promoted the year before, expectations were high. Sadly with a depleted team, Lozanovski is trying to make the best of a bad situation.
“When you build a team over two years and you lose key player in key positions, it’s challenging trying to replace them and trying to find the same quality,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
“Losing players like Michael Eagar, Milos Lujic to South Melbourne was a big hit, because Michael was part of defence and and Milos was our goal scoring side of things so their two big keys that we’ve lost.”
Two players that also hurt Lozanovski to lose were newly minted Cannons boys Dean Piemonte and Goran Zoric, who will face their former team for the first
time.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Hercules boys react to the two on the field, and will certainly attract a lot of attention.
For Lozanovski, his long term plan for the club is what he says will made the difference at the end of the season.
“Now we can go back to the drawing board and start fresh,” he says.
“Over the next couple of months we’ll see a bit more stability and better results.”
The Cannons are a tough opponent to meet at any round, and after another straight win, they’re expecting an easy game.
Northcote on the other hand have come off another loss, this time at the hands of Dandenong Thunder. Bad results won’t be a defining factor for the Hercules boys Lozanovski assures us.
“Obviously we’re on opposite sides of the table, but we’re quite excited, we’ve had quite a decent record against Oakleigh over the last three four years, we’re confident,” he says.
Leading once again is the unstoppable South Melbourne, who managed to keep the records coming, when they beat Bentleigh Greens 2-1 last week. It’s their eighth win in a row.
The loss for the Greens made them pay dearly, dropping two ladder positions to fifth.
Knowing they were beaten by the best, the Greens won’t be too disheartened and will be raring to go against bottom dwellers Goulburn Valley Suns FC today.
South similarly have an easy fixture, taking on eleventh placed Pascoe Vale.
On the up after some shaky first round jitters, Heidelberg United have jumped up to third place, after three straight wins.
The club has well and truly settled into their pace, and will be expecting a thrilling match against Melbourne Knights.
Amazingly, Heidelberg forward Dan Heffernan scored all four goals for the club’s clean sheet against Green Gully last week and will be a sure start this week.
