Gold Coast skipper Jason Culina has called for an all hands on deck effort against Newcastle in Saturday night’s knock-out final at Skilled Park.
Suffering two consecutive defeats to a fast-finishing Wellington and a spirited North Queensland, United’s form heading into the match is less than convincing yet Culina believes his side is up for the task.
“We’re looking good, we trained very well this morning, nice and sharp and the boys are very confident,” Culina said at training on Friday.
“We haven’t been the best these last few weeks and we’re ready to shake that off and start fresh and play some good football again.”
“Personally, I feel that we are ready for this and we have trained well enough this week to warrant a good result on the weekend.”
No stranger to matches on the big stage, the well travelled Qantas Socceroo said he will be leading from the front but maintained that the whole squad has to rise to the occasion.
“I think everybody has to step up tomorrow, it’s definitely not going to be an easy game and we are going to need everybody on the field,” he said.
“Obviously there are a few more experienced guys that probably need to step up a little bit more, I as captain will definitely be doing that and I’ll be there encouraging everybody and pushing everyone along.”
“Up until now, we’ve done a great job, in our first season to finish third is a fantastic effort, but the jobs not done yet and I’m not ready to go on holidays and I don’t think any of the other boys are.”
“We want to go all the way, many have tipped us to go to the Grand Final and we want to prove these people right.”
Losing five of their last six matches the Jets have struggled to convince many pundits of their finals credentials, but welcoming back a string of first team players from injury including Nikolai Topor-Stanley, Sean Rooney, Jin-Hyung Song and Jobe Wheelhouse, Branko Culina’s men, certainly on paper, look more than capable of pushing for a result.
Asked if Newcastle’s inclusions may be a concern, Gold Coast boss Miron Bleiberg said that it would be a different story if the Jets were coming off a four-game winning streak and underlined that the fitness of his players would be a telling factor in the match.
“Newcastle are in worse form than we are, they have lost more games in a row, they have a lot of players who are coming back from injury, on paper they look like they have a full team, but everybody knows that when you come back from injury you’re never 100 per cent in your first game back,” Bleiberg said.
“Hopefully we take advantage, because I’m sending 11 players to the field that are 110 percent, it doesn’t worry me, had we had to play someone who was coming off four wins then maybe it would be a concern.”
“But I think in the case of Newcastle, I think again that’s how this system is designed we are playing three against six, so there must be some reason why they are sixth and we are going to capitalise on this.”
