A new State League competition begins for the Mariners at Proctor Park tonight and it’s a chance for the side to make some improvements after remaining mostly unchanged.

After finishing second-last in 2013 coach Andrew Fearnley and his team will not want a repeat of last year, a season that saw the team take five wins from their 22 matches.

Fearnley is disappointed that his side couldn’t get themselves more game time going into the opener and says his side still need to iron things out at the back.

“We were looking good. We have some washed out games which affected our momentum a bit but you can’t do much about that. I think that we’re in a good spot and the boys are keen to start playing again. I don’t think we’re quite at our best yet though,” he said.

“We’ve got to make sure we’re defensively structured. That’s been our Achilles heel, you could say, that in a small period of time we concede a lot of goals. We still need to get smarter when we’re under pressure.”

Last season when the Mariners and Gladesville met it was at Carrington Park in July and the result wasn’t pretty for the home team, who suffered a 7-2 defeat. Two months earlier though, the Mariners got the better of them on their turf with a 4-2 win, meaning they know what it will take to get the better of their opponents.

The Mariners conceded, on averaged, two-and-a-half goals per game last year and Fearnley believes that repeating such figures won’t allow the team to be competitive in 2014.

“The way we’ve attacked we look more dangerous in the final third than last year. We’ve certainly got the ability to score enough goals but we’ve got to have the discipline to hold on to the lead. If we get two to three goals in a match we should be winning it,” he said.

“We’ve kept the majority of the team from last season. We haven’t tried playing any differently, just have to focus on keeping tighter in defence.”

The Mariners are hoping they can start the new season the way that they ended the last. They won their last two matches of the 2013 season, including a 3-1 victory over eventual premiers Balmain Tigers FC.

Tonight’s match gets underway at 6pm.

WESTERN NSW MARINERS FC: Bryce Deaton, Nicky Spice, Jesse Rain, Nathan Davis, Brent Osborne, Andrew Christie, Jared Portegies, Owen Short, Adam Scimone, James Christie, Nick Rutherford, Jacob Soetons.