Perth captain Jacob Burns says the club can’t afford its Qantas Socceroos players being distracted from the job at hand by thoughts of national selection and next year’s World Cup finals.
Speaking ahead of flying east for the Glory’s first round clash with Adelaide on Friday night, Burns said he and his Australian team-mates Mile Sterjovski and Chris Coyne would be concentrating solely on ensuring Perth started the Hyundai A-League season with a bang.
The 31-year-old added that reports Sterjovski, Coyne and himself would be loaned to Adelaide at the end of the season to play in the Asian Champions League, keeping them fresh for South Africa, was also the furthest thing from his mind.
“I’m not really interested in any of that at the minute,” Burns said on Wednesday.
“The most important thing is the club football and getting a good start.”
“If we don’t do that, then there’s going to be no talk about going on loan or anything like that.”
“(So) my minds fully focussed on Adelaide at the minute and we’ll see how we go from there,” he said.
The Glory have suffered a bad run with illness and injuries over the last month, but coach Dave Mitchell seems to have the majority of his squad up and running, despite the disruptions.
Former Blackburn captain Andy Todd appears to have overcome a back injury and has trained over the last two days, while the Glory’s player of the season last year, Adriano Pellegrino, also trained on Wednesday after treatment on a minor groin strain.
Impressive young defender Scott Neville also took part in training on Wednesday, despite taking a painful knock to his foot earlier in the week. But Mitchell said it was unlikely the 20-year-old would start against the Reds.
Neville’s injury leaves the Glory with a hole at right back as his replacement James Downey is unavailable with a knee injury that will see him miss six to eight weeks.
This gives Mitchell something of a selection dilemma as last year’s captain Jamie Coyne will probably be used to shore up the defence, despite being the No.1 candidate to line up alongside Burns in central midfield in the absence of Wayne Srhoj, who will miss the first match with a hamstring injury.
Burns has also experienced hamstring tightness during the pre-season but says he’s fit and ready to play 90 minutes against the Reds, although he refused to say whether he may be teaming up with Sterjovski at the heart of the Glory’s midfield.
“Yeah there’s a few options in there,” Burns said. “Obviously we want to keep it all under the hat for the minute but we’ve got a talented squad, so whoever’s going to be in there will do a job for us.”
“It’s such a long pre-season, to do all the hard yards and then have niggles and things just before the first round, isn’t ideal.”
“But in general, the mood is good and we’ll be looking for the points in Adelaide,” he said.
