United victory vital as Knights ride on
GOLD Coast Knights coach Grae Piddick believes their FFA Cup upset of Gold Coast United could prove a key moment in the club’s quest for NPL success in 2019 and beyond.
The Gold Coast Premier League heavyweights showed they will be far from disgraced when they join United in the NPL next season, downing their local rivals 3-2 in a seesawing FFA Cup Round 5 clash at Carrara on Tuesday night.
Piddick, who previously coached Palm Beach and Gold Coast City in the NPL, said he would look back on the triumph as decisive in developing a club empire.
“Everyone wants to build this club. There’s a lot here for this club, a lot of potential,” he said.
“We’re definitely going to try to go places, we know we’re in the NPL next year and this gives us an indication of ‘if we were in the NPL right now, where would we be?’. We definitely need to improve and we’ve got the scope to improve so a win like this will help kick the boys on and motivate them for sure.”
The Knights opened the scoring through Jarrod Kyle in the fourth minute, before United hit back courtesy of goals from James Coutts and Brandon Reeves inside the opening 20 minutes.
But strikes from Max Brown and Morgan Saunders shortly before halftime restored the Knights’ advantage and left United coach Sean Lane to lament his side’s lack of game management.
“I thought we were in control at 2-1 but four minutes of madness at the end of that first half (cost us). You can’t give any side two goals and expect that it’s going to be an easy game from there, and it wasn’t,” he said. “If (the players) are good enough to be here then they’re good enough to manage games.
“They didn’t manage the game today and they should have. We’ve spoken about it (and) they either chose not to or couldn’t. If they chose not to it’s a problem and if they couldn’t that’s also a problem.”
A date and opponent for the Knights’ next FFA Cup opponent is yet to be confirmed.
THERE’S A LOT HERE FOR THIS CLUB, A LOT OF POTENTIAL
KNIGHTS COACH GRAE PIDDICK