The Central Coast Mariners have arrived in China eager to get a result in their Asian Champions League clash against Tianjin Teda on Wednesday night.
The Mariners earned a point in their first Champions League match at home against Korean powerhouse Pohang Steelers last week and face a Chinese team which lost first-up to Kawasaki Frontale.
Coach Lawrie McKinna will be going for the win but would be more than happy if the two teams were equal come the end of the match.
“If we get a draw away from home we’d be happy, but we’ve come here expecting and thinking that we can win,” McKinna said.
“We have to believe that we can come here and get a result – we think we can come away with a win, but realistically, if we came away with a draw, it’s still a good result and we’ve come and done a good job.”
“But we can definitely win and we’ll certainly be trying to.”
The Mariners will make one change for the match with Dylan Macallister coming in at the expense of Nick Rizzo.
Tianjin Teda’s line-up will have some familiar faces with striker Mark Bridge – who is on loan from Sydney – set to feature along with former Italian international midfielder Damiano Tommasi.
McKinna knows his side will up against it
“We’ve got a copy of Tianjin’s game from last Wednesday night and we’ll watch that and go through that, obviously they got beat but they’re going to be at home, in front of a big crowd and wanting to prove that they’re a very good team by beating us,” he said.
“Mark Bridge will be doing his best to do what he does best against the Mariners and score.”
“We know that we’re in for a very hard game and that we’ll have to be on top of our game to get a result.”
The Mariners will have three weeks to recover from the trip with their next match scheduled for April 8 when they welcome Kawasaki Frontale to the Central Coast.
Central Coast squad
3. Shane Huke, 4. Pedj Bojic, 5. Bradley Porter, 7. John Hutchinson, 8. Dean Heffernan, 9. Nik Mrdja, 10. Adrian Caceres, 11. Dylan Macallister, 13. Paul O-Grady, 15. Andrew Clark, 16. Nigel Boogaard, 17. Matthew Osman, 18. Alex Wilkinson, 19. Matt Simon, 20. Danny Vukovic (gk), 21. Ahmad Elrich, 23. Adam Kwasnik, 30. Andrew Redmayne (gk)
