United to go for kill
NORTH Queensland United are hellbent on taking full advantage of games against fellow regional teams after getting their season back on track with a 1- 0 win over South West Queensland Thunder at Toowoomba on Saturday.
After conceding 10 goals in the previous two games against Moreton Bay and Western Pride, NQU secured their first clean sheet of the season to leap to sixth on the National Premier League Queensland ladder.
Right winger Matthew Richards set up Jarrod Green’s fourth goal of the campaign in the 73rd minute to secure three valuable points.
After beginning their inaugural season with victories over Sunshine Coast and Mackay, NQU have secured a maximum nine points from three games against regional teams.
“We know what they regard as the ‘ big five’ teams from Brisbane or that southern region, we’re always going to have really tough games against them and will be underdogs,” NQU coach Michael Brooks said.
“The regional teams, we think we should go into those games looking to get three points, and that’s what we’ll be trying to do.
“We’ve laid a good platform now, and we’ve got to build on it.
“We want to be regarded as the top regional team, ideally, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do in our game.”
Brooks rated the win against the Thunder as their best performance of the season, and was particularly rapt with the defensive effort.
“We laid a good platform by defending well but we played pretty well in general,” Brooks said.
“We kept the ball and moved it well, it was probably our best game of the year, to be honest. We created a lot of chances and their keeper pulled off three or four top notch saves.”
The only downside for NQU was an ankle injury to defender Mitchell Maher, who will be assessed this week after coming off the field early in the second half.
NQU will host Gold Coast United at Brolga Park this Saturday at 7pm. NPL ROUND SIX NORTH QLD UNITED 1 ( Jarrod Green 73’) bt SOUTH WEST QLD THUNDER 0