Central Coast manager Lawrie McKinna is confident his side can overturn a two-goal deficit in Friday night’s Hyundai A-League Minor Semi-Final second leg against Queensland at Suncorp Stadium.
After losing the first leg 2-0 at home, the Mariners will most likely need three goals to progress to a Preliminary Final showdown against either Adelaide or Melbourne.
Scoring has proved a difficult task as of late with Central Coast failing to find the back of the net in its last three matches, but with the injured Ahmad Elrich the only player unavailable to McKinna, the Mariners are confident of pulling off an unlikely win.
“We’re definitely in it and we’ll put a team out on the park tonight that is going to compete and try to get a result,” McKinna said.
“The boys will know that we can do it, or we-d be better served by not even turning up tonight.”
“I think we-ve got a chance – I-m not going to say that we-ll win 3-0 and qualify for the Preliminary Final, I-m going to say that the team that we-ll put on the park will compete, whether we win or lose.”
The Mariners will take from the knowledge that they bounced back from a near identical situation last year to secure a berth in the Grand Final.
Faced with a 2-0 deficit after the first leg against Newcastle, Central Coast showed amazing spirit to beat the Jets 3-0 a fortnight later at Bluetongue Stadium.
“The plan when we played Newcastle last year was to keep them scoreless – we don-t need to score in the first half, we just need to stop them from scoring,” said McKinna.
“If we can get a goal in the first half, great, but as the game goes on without a goal, Queensland will start doubting what is going on, they have a few players missing and with one goal we could put a bit of doubt in their minds.”
“As the game goes on we can chuck men forward, which will cause them problems, so there-s no rush to get a goal, there are ninety minutes to get one goal because you can score twice in one minute.”
The two sides haven’t met at Suncorp Stadium since Round 3, but McKinna would love a repeat performance of that match when his side ran out 4-2 winners.
“We can take heart out of that result but Queensland-s form has improved at home, they-ve got a good record there recently,” he said.
“It-s going to be hard, but we-ve never backed down from a fight and we-re not going to start now.”
