Story and photo courtesy of Northern NSW Football

Toronto-Awaba Stags vs. Wallsend FC
Sunday 18 March, 2:30 pm
Lyall Peacock Field 

Toronto-Awaba will host a renewed Wallsend team at Lyall Peacock Field for their first game of the season.

After an awfully disappointing campaign in the Ampcontrol Heritage Cup where they didn’t score a single goal, Wallsend will be hoping to put last weekend behind them and new coach Ben Edwards believes his side is still capable of big things this year.

“We’ve been working on playing forward, getting into the right areas and playing the right balls and it’s been working right up until the Heritage Cup,” said Edwards.

“There’d be alarm bells if we weren’t creating the chances I think. We’re still creating the chances though, just unfortunately sometimes they don’t come off in football.”

Edwards stated that despite Toronto-Awaba keeping rather quiet about their signings throughout the pre-season, that his side is still anticipating a strong opposition.

“I’m expecting a lot.”

“They always bring something decent to the table when we play them.”

For Toronto-Awaba, they’ll, unfortunately, be missing two first graders in Michael Bru and Hayden Jensen.

Coach Adam Routledge admitted that they may struggle to gel together defensively towards the start of the year, but their attack will be a big strength.

“Our defence is where we’ve worked on in pre-season,” said Routledge.

“It might take us a few rounds to get going.”

“We’re a fairly attacking side, we’ve definitely got some go-forward.”

Routledge confessed he hadn’t researched his Round One opponent’s all too much, stating that he expected a tough game, but he was mostly focused on his own side.

“They’re [Wallsend] usually pretty physical and obviously competitive – which is what you want to start the season really.”

“I know it’s the old cliché, but we’re just worrying about us.”