Fury’s young guns take it up to City

A DOUBLE from promising young striker Sean Karambasis wasn’t enough for the Northern Fury as they fell to a disappointing 3- 2 loss to Brisbane City on Saturday.

City were up 2- 1 at half time after goals from Anthony Poljak and Antonio Murray cancelled out Karambasis’ 16th minute opener before the 18- year- old struck again in the second half to level the contest.

A win would have seen the Fury move into the NPL Queensland top four but it wasn’t to be as hosts Brisbane scored the deciding goal on 70 minutes through a Mat Biggins header. The Townsvillebased club has now slipped to eighth in the standings.

Injuries to regular starters Ari Isman and goalkeeper Dan Wilesmith provided an opportunity for some of the Fury’s younger players to step up to first team football and, despite the result, coach Ian Ferguson still took plenty of positives out of the game.

“We lost Ari and Dan late on Friday afternoon so I brought some of our 18- yearolds into the squad and all in all I was pretty pleased,” Ferguson said.

“Brisbane City are such a big, physical side and that put us under some pressure and they also got a lot of joy out of

I thought we played some reasonably good football, especially seeing we had so many young kids in there NORTHERN FURY COACH IAN FERGUSON

corners and free kicks. We were uncomfortable for spells but the team had a lot of changes and I thought we played some reasonably good football, especially seeing we had so many young kids in there.”

Saturday night’s result was the first home win for Brisbane City since May and coach Darron Heselden said the win was the perfect way to bounce back after a last start loss to local rivals Olympic FC.

“We got back to ourselves tonight,’’ Heselden said.

“We were busy and we had some great young talent on show tonight that really stood up.”

The Fury are at home this weekend and will face a tough task when they host competition leaders Brisbane Strikers at the Townsville Sports Reserve on Saturday night.