Fresh off their first home win of the year, the North Queensland Fury are looking to continue that momentum when they travel to Skilled Park to take on the Gold Coast on Saturday night.
Spirits are high in the Fury camp with the team unbeaten in four matches and marquee striker Robbie Fowler, who scored the equaliser in last weekend’s 2-1 win over Perth, in fine form.
Coach Ian Ferguson always had belief in his side and with two wins against top-quality sides in Sydney and Perth, he is confident the Fury can match it with anyone.
“We’ve beaten Sydney, who were at the top, and now we’ve done it against Perth so the belief is there that we can win. People keep mentioning about confidence and so on, but confidence has never wavered here, we’ve always been good,” he said.
North Queensland returns to the scene of its worst defeat of the year, a 5-0 hammering back in Round 2, but this time round Gold Coast will be feeling the pressure after it copped a 6-0 drubbing from Wellington last start.
Ferguson admitted that the Fury gave GCU too much respect last time they played and this weekend they’ll be much better prepared.
“I know the feeling, I know what Miron’s (Bleiberg) going through right now, probably disillusioned with the score the same way I was, but you have to regroup and go on with it, there’s no use feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve got another opportunity on Saturday to do something up about it and they’ll be up with it,” he said.
“We’ll be better prepared than what we were last time, there was a lot of people hurting after that result including myself, including a few players, so we’re heading down there with a positive attitude … hopefully we can keep the run going.”
“They’ll be hurting as much as we were and they’ve got a lot of good players who will come out and do their best again and we’re wary of that. We didn’t bounce back straight away but what we did do is we regrouped and we put in a lot better performance and they’ll probably try and do the same thing.”
Midfielder Chris Grossman, who wasn’t a part of the squad that played Gold Coast earlier in the year, is confident that a similar result won’t happen again this weekend.
“Everyone in the squad was hurting, but everyone that is selected this weekend will go down there and hopefully try and prove that result was just a one off and I think everyone’s seen how much we have improved since then,” he said.
“We haven’t really harped on it too much, I think that was just a one-off thing and we’ve got better ever since then and we’re coming off a win so we’re hoping to get a win this week.”
Ferguson is hopeful of regaining striker Daniel McBreen and defender Robbie Middleby for the match, although a decision won’t be made until later in the week.
