Queensland Roar coach Frank Farina is predicting positive times ahead despite his team’s preliminary final loss against Adelaide United at Hindmarsh Stadium on Saturday.
It’s the second year in a row the team has lost the penultimate clash on the Hyundai A-League calendar and ensures they are one of the few teams in the competition not to have played in a grand final or to win some silverware.
Farina said stability among the playing group and the experiences of the past seasons would eventually pay dividends for the club.
“If we can keep this squad together it will happen, we’ll get to Asia and we’ll get to a grand final,” he said.
“This side will largely stay intact and obviously be very hungry.”
Charlie Miller, who came off the bench against the Reds and almost saved the game for his side, struggled with injury in his first season with the Roar.
Farina said the Scot would return next year and should have a greater impact.
“Charlie will be back for the beginning of the season, there’s no doubt,” he said.
“He missed a lot of our preseason, he got here in July and we started in April. He’ll have a full preseason behind him before we start.”
“It was just unfortunate with the double hernia because Charlie was flying then – I think he would’ve won player of the year if he’d continued on.”
Queensland will also look to strengthen its already competitive squad by enlisting some new talent over the winter.
“We will recruit, obviously you’ve got to look at recruiting, we’ll lose a few players but the nucleus of the side will stay on,” he said.
“We’ll try and strengthen positions, young Tahj Minniecon is leaving but I think we certainly need another defender for next year because we’ll have Luke DeVere away quite a bit with the (Under) 20s, Josh McCloughan we’ve got to see how he comes back from his injury, and we’ll certainly be looking at another centre half and possibly another attacking player.”
“Elsewhere on the park I think we are pretty right, we’ve got a good mix, we are not losing players that we desperately wanted to keep; Tahj was probably the only one.”
Saturday’s clash against Adelaide was a frustrating event for Queensland which dominated play in the second half.
Farina was philosophical about the result and thought his players would be stronger for the experience.
“That’s football, sometimes the better team doesn’t win and I thought most probably we were the better side but we were beaten by a wonder strike and it was a fantastic strike; you can’t do much about that,” he said.
“We certainly had our chances. After that, Adelaide sat back and defended and to their credit they defended very well, worked very hard for each other.”
“In football you are going to have a lot of low points, most probably more than you’ll have really high parts of your career, or things that you win, so they’ve just got to learn that.
“Again it’s experience you can’t give to people or you can’t tell them about it, you’ve got to live it.”
