THE Western NSW Mariners will look put a disappointing National Premier Leagues 3 defeat behind them on Tuesday night when they begin their 2018 FFA Cup campaign.
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A nation-wide knockout competition, the FFA Cup involves teams from a wide range of tiers from A-League outfits down to association sides.
The competition unfolds in progressional stages, with lower ranked teams playing in the early rounds before the survivors join professional outfits in the pursuit of glory.
NPL3 outfit the Mariners have drawn the lower ranked Lindfield for their first FFA Cup match, but coach Andrew Fearnley is anticipating a tough contest at Police Paddock.
Certainly his side will need to be better than Saturday night when surrendering a 2-1 lead to suffer a 7-3 defeat to Camden in the second round of NPL3 action.
“Lindfield are an association team, but they are a pretty strong association. They are in Northern Suburbs, Kur-ring-gai, and that’s a pretty big association and there are certainly some strong teams there,” Fearnley said.
“That’s what the cup is about, association teams wanting to knock-off NPL teams and NPL3 teams like us want to perform well against NPL teams higher than us.
“They are going to come down motivated to cause an upset and we’ve got to be wary of that as we have in the past. We’ve played teams from association football competitions that have certainly taken the game to us before, we’ve just got make sure we don’t get caught out.”
Last year Linfield suffered a 3-1 loss to Pennant Hills in their FFA Cup opener, while the Mariners made it to the fifth round of the Football NSW section of the draw.
Fearnley’s men beat Glenhaven (3-0) and Pennant Hills (4-0) before going down 4-0 to Rockdale.
It is a record the coach hopes to improve on and he hopes that hosting Tuesday night’s fixture will give his men an edge.
“The beauty of the cup is the romance of trying to go as far as you can and obviously the lure is getting to the TV rounds with the A-League clubs and all the other states,” Fearnley said.
“This is the first hurdle and we’re at home. It has been a bit of a challenge ground-wise because they are all getting renovated or worked on, so the game will be at Police Paddock.
“But we are looking forward to being able to go as far as we can in that comp and it’s certainly helpful that our first game is at home. We’ve got to make the most of that.
“We’ve had some good runs, it was disappointing last year when we got knocked out early … but certainly this year we want to go as far as we can.”
Tuesday’s FFA Cup match is set to kick-off at 7pm.
