Lions raring to go
THE sport shutdown has not diminished Geelong Soccer Club’s ambitions of climbing back into NPL2 this year.
Community soccer remains on hold until at least July 20, when the State Government has allowed for senior competitions to resume.
But Football Victoria is continuing to work through a fixture and how many matches will be played in the truncated season.
The Lions dropped to NPL3 for this season after a league restructure, but president Robert Kukanovski said they did not intend on spending a long time in the division.
“We are an ambitious club, we’ve always been an ambitious club and we’re on record as being ambitious,” Kukanovski said.
“We always go into a season confident and we’re working to regain our place in NPL2.”
Contact training can resume from July 13 and there is the prospect the season could run until late October.
He said training numbers had been strong at Stead Park in anticipation of a season start and the strength of the squad had not been weakened because of the pandemic.
Junior players are also mustard-keen for the opening whistle.
“It’s been a season like no other and with all the challenges and environment we’re in at the moment, it’s been difficult,” Kukanovski said.
“We are certainly keen to kick off the season, not only for our senior program but also for our junior program. They’re as equally keen to kick off.”
He said a late season would cause logistic issues for next year but it was prepared for a late finish to the year.
“There are impacts to planning for the 2021 season in terms of trial dates … we don’t know what that’s going to look like exactly at this point in time,” he said.
“Until we get a view from the league on what the season’s going to look like, then we can understand what impact that has on our trial dates for 2021.
“Generally in September, October, we’ve started our trials for 2021 so if we’re running the season (then), we’ll have to push that out and then realign at some point.”