Southern United facing colossal challenge
SOUTHERN United has possibly its toughest task of the season today.
It will play the tabletopping Auckland City at Kiwitea Street in Auckland. Originally scheduled for January 29, the match was moved due to Auckland City’s involvement in the Nike Lunar New Year Cup in Hong Kong.
That has left Southern with the mammoth task of having to play the league’s top two teams in the space of four days.
To make things more difficult, several of the team’s top players are unavailable due to the midweek fixture. Ross Howard, Michael Hogan, Liam Little, Andrew Ridden and Sam Collier are among those missing. That has opened the way for several youngsters to get on the pitch.
Coach Paul O’Reilly said it would be a huge challenge for those players, but was hoping to have a good crack nonetheless.
‘‘Even though Auckland have had a couple of poor results, they’re still by far the best team in the league, I think.
‘‘Every game we’ve played this year I think we’ve been pretty competitive and created chances. Even against Auckland we were hard to break down. But I certainly think they’re a step ahead of everyone in the league.’’
The side has a short turnaround from its 31 loss to Team Wellington on Sunday. That makes for a less than ideal preparation, although the team is making the best of it.
‘‘We [trained last night], but it [had] to be light because the players just aren’t going to be able to train hard and then play a game,’’ O’Reilly said.
‘‘The physios will be working overtime. A Sunday to Wednesday turnaround is not ideal at all, but we’ve just got to accept what the league do and get on with it.’’
With three games remaining, the team’s goal is still to finish above the bottom two. It trails Hamilton Wanderers by three points and Tasman United by four.
Both teams have played an extra game, however, and Southern’s finalround clash with Tasman offers an opportunity to close that gap significantly.
The team was still training well and O’Reilly said that one of the big positives of the season had been the attitude from the players right through.
‘‘I’d be really disappointed if we finish in the bottom two. Hamilton are still in our sights and, although Tasman are four points ahead of us, they’re still in our sights as well. We’ve still got to play them.
‘‘I don’t think there’s any easy games in this league, but the goal is to still pick up some points. If we can pick up four points in the next couple of games, that might just be enough. It might not, but I think it might just be enough to get us over the line.’’
A 66YEAROLD record fell at yesterday’s John McGlashan College athletics sports.
Taylor Mechen jumped 12.45m to break the senior boys triple jump record by 7cm at the school yesterday.
The previous record, which was the school’s oldest standing record, had been set in 1951 by Colin Gray.
The 17yearold year 13 pupil was stoked with the performance for more reasons that one.
Not only was it significantly further than his previous personalbest of 11.30m, it was his first jump since last summer, after he dislocated his knee playing rugby.
After slippery conditions resulted in the event being moved to later in the day after one jump, he managed 12.25m with his second jump.
‘‘I thought I’d screwed up the jump because my toe hurt quite a lot,’’ he said.
‘‘Then all of a sudden they were just like ‘oh you just broke that by 7cm’.’’
He thought his improvements had come as a result of doing plenty of cycling over the summer, which helped build his leg strength.
He had not been doing club athletics this season, but was intending on competing at the Otago secondary schools championships when he hopes to take part in the triple jump, long jump, high jump, 100m and 4x100m relay.