Strikers Will Still Be Hungry, Says McLaren

Wednesday 26th Aug, 2009

The Hyundai QSL goes into finals mode this weekend and the first cabs off the rank will be the Brisbane Strikers and Olympic FC in the major semi-final at Perry Park on Saturday night, with the prize for the winners being a Grand Final berth.

And what a major semi-final it promises to be, featuring, as it does, the two teams who fought tooth and nail against each other from almost the first round of the season for the right to be called Queensland champions! So tight was that race that the Strikers clinched the honour only in the penultimate round, when Olympic lost their last fixture to the Sunshine Coast Fire.

Overall, the head-to-head record in the QSL between the teams reads Brisbane Strikers 1, Olympic FC 3. But the Strikers timed their first win over Olympic perfectly (and strangely enough by the scoreline of 3-1) when they travelled to Goodwin Park in mid-July for a match that had a vital bearing on the destination of the champions’ trophy.

Some observers interpreted the result as the ending of a hoodoo for Stuart McLaren’s team, but the Brisbane Strikers coach insisted on Wednesday that his players would not be attaching any particular significance to it in the lead-up to this Saturday’s game.

“I didn’t really think it was a monkey off the back”, McLaren said. “It was more of a slight annoyance and a strange sort of quirk of fate, if you like, that we hadn’t managed to beat them (before) because I think that in each of the previous three games we’d played well enough.

“I know that Bobby (Olympic coach Bobby Hamilton) had made some comments before the last game that each of the preceding games could have gone either way. The fact that they’d come out with nine points from those three games that could have gone either way was a bit unfortunate from our point of view.

“So it was not so much a monkey off our back, but obviously that was a crucial game for us because it meant that we made up a points difference”.

While dismissing the result as a factor in the thinking of his own players, McLaren suggested that it could hold unpleasant memories for Olympic.

“Maybe – I would never try and judge it – but maybe it set the wobbles up for Olympic that continued between there and the end of the season’, he said. “Obviously they lost points to Logan and then the Sunny Coast, which we were able to capitalise on and get ahead and win the league.

“But this weekend I think it’s going to be a case of two very good football teams going in to a match that’s a little bit of all-or-nothing and desperate, for different reasons, to make sure that they succeed. So we’re not taking too many advantage points from the fact that we beat them last time out, apart from knowing that we’re capable of beating them. But obviously earlier in the season they beat us and they’ll take some heart from that and know that they are capable, when they are playing well, of beating us. So it’s very much in the balance”.

Finals matches, like any other, are very often won by the team that displays the greatest will to win and McLaren admitted he was preparing for the possibility that his own team’s ‘hunger’ might have been partially satisfied by winning the championship.

“That’s the obvious question”, he agreed. “There’s always the danger (but) thankfully I haven’t had to work too hard at making sure the players regain their focus and still have that hunger. It has been spoken about from my point of view. I think it would be remiss of me as a coach to miss that out. But pleasing aspects have been the attitude and the application at training – we’ve had some good sessions since we clinched the league – and the matches that we’ve played.

“Up at Mareeba the boys finished the job very professionally and very thoroughly. It would have been easy for them to take the foot off the gas and maybe draw or lose that game and say ‘well, it doesn’t really matter because we’ve already got the trophy in the bag’. And obviously, the practice match that we had last week against the Gold Coast United youth side - I think they approached that game very well and played some good football that night, and scored a couple of good goals.

“So, all in all up to now the signs have been good. But it doesn’t get us a result on Saturday – they’ve got to carry that attitude and that mindset into Saturday”.

McLaren said that, when factoring in the mental strength that it takes to win semi-finals in which any mistakes can be crucial, he was able to draw encouragement from the way his team handled the last six matches in its season.

“If you look at the way our season panned out, we probably had half a dozen finals games in the run-in to the season. And thankfully, from our point of view, we responded well so hopefully we can stay in that mould”, McLaren said.

The Strikers’ win over Olympic in July was achieved with a team that virtually picked itself, given that McLaren had a third of his squad unavailable through injury and suspension that day. This time, however, the only player in McLaren’s squad who is unavailable is luckless midfielder Jonti Richter, whose season ended when he tore a thigh muscle three weeks ago.

While he was completely satisfied with the performance of the players who did the job at Goodwin Park, McLaren hinted that Olympic would not be facing the same line up on Saturday.

“I’m probably not one who looks back to the previous time we played the opposition and tries to figure out whether we can get as close to that starting line-up as possible”, he said.

“I’m probably more of the here and now and I’ll try to pick the players who have been performing well for us lately. That’s pretty much been the message right the way through the season. If you perform well in a game you are more or less certain to keep your spot for the following week.

“It’s slightly difficult this time, because we’ve had that week’s break from competitive fixtures and people have been playing for their positions more or less in the game against the Bulls and last week against Gold Coast. But there will obviously be differences between the side that played at Yeronga and the side that takes the park on Saturday”.

McLaren said he expected Olympic to come up with a different game plan to the one the Strikers dealt with so effectively at Yeronga. On that occasion key Olympic playmakers such as central midfielder Hyuk Su-Seo and winger Andrew Oar endured a difficult night. Oar got very little joy out of Strikers fullback Michael Butters, while Seo was so harassed that he finished the match playing as a sweeper, often within his own penalty area.

“I think a coach of Bobby’s standing and stature will have thought, and come up with a plan, and worked with his players on ways to prevent that same situation happening again”, McLaren said. “No matter which approach we take, I think they’ll find a way of getting their key players involved in the game in an attacking sense so we might have some different problems to deal with on Saturday”.

However, McLaren said he was not expecting the game to be any less free-flowing than all four previous encounters have been.

“I think there’s quality on both sides that would be a good advert for the league and good entertainment for the punters”, he said. “And perhaps, without trying to predict the future, if we do get an open, flowing game of football I think we might just be able to get the result in that manner.

“I think with Bobby’s general attitude - he’s gone on record saying he likes to come out and openly attack teams – he’s not one to sit back and be cagey, and that doesn’t suit the Strikers either. We are not a team that plays for containment. We’re a team that likes to go on the front foot as well, so I think we will see that open, free-flowing game”.

Kick-off will be at 7.00 pm.