SATURDAY will mark the first time in more than three years that Western NSW Mariners FC will made the trip to Ron Dine Stadium to face the Camden Tigers, but coach Andrew Fearnley can still recall how tough the away fixture can be.
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In was July 19, 2014, when Camden and Mariners both competed in the State League competition that the pair last met. The Tigers won that game 2-0.
The Mariners went on to step up into the National Premier Leagues 3 competition and after taking the 2017 State League honours, the Tigers have been promoted to that same tier this year.
“Camden has been promoted, so we haven’t seen them for a number of years. But the thing about our comp is that everyone in Sydney can change their team from year-to-year … so it can all be a bit of a lottery,” Fearnley said.
“But we know a little bit about Camden, they've pretty much kept faith with the guys that got them promotion last year. They’re not going to be easy.”
In the season opening round, the Mariners did well to come from a two-goal deficit to draw with the strong Fraser Park, while Camden went down 3-2.
Fearnley said there was merit in both performances.
“We created enough chances to be up at half-time and we weren’t, then we were 2-0 down because we got punished for switching off for a little bit. At that point it was not looking to good, so to come back and get a point was certainly positive,” he said.
“They were a little bit unlucky last week against Gladesville, they were 3-0 down and came back to make it 3-2 and in that period of time Gladesville had a boy sent off too.”
The Mariners have trained well this week in the lead up to Saturday night’s match and while Fearnley is confident, he knows beating the Tigers on their home turf will be tough.
“Our issue with Camden has always been that they are extremely tough at home, we’ve struggled there when they were in our comp before, getting results at Ron Dine. They are certainly a team that do well when they are at home as opposed to when they are on the road,” he said.
“As long as we maintain our concentration for 90 minutes I’m confident that we’ll get the goals because we have enough firepower in our squad to get them. We just have to make sure we don’t give away cheap errors.”
Meanwhile the Mariners women will be looking to improve on their opening round defeat in the NPL 2 competition when hosting Gladesville Ravens on Sunday at Lithgow’s Majorie Jackson Field.
Kick-off will be at 3pm.
