Injured skipper Steve Corica is confident he’ll be back on deck in time for Sydney FC’s pivotal clash against Perth Glory at Subiaco Oval in a fortnight.
Corica limped from the field in the 18th minute of his side’s 1-0 loss to Gold Coast United on Saturday night with a suspected grade one hamstring strain.
The 36-year-old was sorely missed as the competition leader fell to its fifth loss of the season, but with no Hyundai A-League games scheduled this weekend in order to accommodate the FIFA match day break, the skipper is a strong chance to travel to Perth.
“It’s not too bad I’ll be seeing the doctor tomorrow but after the game the physio checked it out and probably thinks it’s just a grade-one strain which is normally around 10 days or two weeks,” Corica told Sportal on Monday morning.
“We’ve got this weekend off coming up so hopefully I’ll be right for the Perth game.”
“It all depends obviously how it heals, I’ll speak to the doctor tomorrow and I’m pretty confident that I’ll be back for that one I think.”
Corica dismissed reports he suffered the injury in a tackle from Gold Coast’s Steve Pantelidis.
“There was no tackle,” he said.
“I was just sprinting to close the left back down and I felt a bit of a pinch and I thought if I carried on in the game it probably would have got a lot worse, so I thought it was best to come off.”
The Sky Blues are well placed at the halfway stage of the regular season sitting one point clear of arch rivals Melbourne Victory at the top of the ladder.
But while the skipper is pleased with the side’s progress, he insists there is still scope for improvement – especially on the road.
“Obviously we’re top of the table at the moment so (the season so far has been) pretty good. I think we’ve had our ups and downs as well but I think it’s all about consistency and if we can keep winning games hopefully we’ll be up there at the end of the season,” he said.
“Our home record’s pretty good I think we’ve only lost one game at home and I think we need to do a little bit better away from home.”
“It was a little bit unlucky on the weekend, I think the first 15-20 minutes we were on top of them (Gold Coast) but obviously (coach) Vitezslav (Lavicka) had to make his changes after that and that maybe upset the team a little bit and they got on top.”
“But they only beat us by one goal and we had a couple of chances and obviously as long as we’re creating the chances we’ve got a good chance of winning games.”
Meanwhile Corica, who comes off contract at the end of the season, insists he is yet to make a decision on his immediate playing future.
“I’ve always said I’ll just wait until the end of the season to just see how things are going and we’ll go from there really,” he said.
“It changes a lot in football very quickly. I’m 36 at the moment, I’ll be almost 37 when the grand final comes around so we’ll decide obviously after the season finishes.”
