Adelaide Blue Eagles v South Adelaide
PlayStation 4 National Premier League South Australia, Round 4

When: Saturday 19 March at 3:00pm
Where: Marden Sports Complex

Teams:

Adelaide Blue Eagles: Antoni Trimboli, 2. Adam Harris, 4. Christopher Atsikbasis, 7. Jean-Glaude Boyokino, 8. Damien Crettenden, 9. Fortunato Filletti, 10. Evan Kounavelis, 13. Alemayo Kebede, 15. Samuel Tesfagabr, 17. Matthew Dawber, 20. Anthony Dimas, 22. Andrej Rastovac, 23. Hirofumi Kochi, 25. Pedram Sourjani (GK)

South Adelaide: 1. Addison Rodgers (GK), 2. Joshua Partridge, 3. Christopher Reed (C), 4. Robert Parker, 5. Adam Horner, 6. Brayden Micallef, 7. Connor Fagan, 8. Sam Carmichael, 9. Philip Rideout, 10. Jonathon Rideout, 11. Guy Miller, 13. Daniel Varma, 15. Dylan Torr, 16. Daniel Sullivan

Preview:

Adelaide Blue Eagles will look to amend an inconsistent start to the season when they host South Adelaide in Round 4 of the PlayStation 4 National Premier League South Australia.

Blue Eagles played out a hard fought 2-all draw with West Torrens Birkalla in Round 3, while South Adelaide would consider themselves unlucky not to have got anything out of their encounter with Adelaide United after pushing the visitors to their limits.

Having had a win, a draw and a loss over the opening three rounds, Blue Eagles have had a tough start to the 2016 season in comparison to last year, where the Marden side went nine games unbeaten before being handed their first loss.

Over that nine game stretch, Blue Eagles had a tough time overcoming South Adelaide but eventually ran out as winners.

Chris Atsikbasis, Blue Eagles Captain, was expecting much of the same come Saturday.

“As per all encounters with South, we know that they will be a good physical team and they will fight to the last minute of the match,” he said.

“It’s always a difficult encounter as there are no teams to be taken lightly in the league this year.

“I think from some reports South were hard done by last week, we have come up against them in the past few years and it’s never an easy game.

“They will be looking to bounce back and we will do our best to get the season rolling in the right direction.”

Speaking on the Adelaide United match, South Coach Danny Graystone said it was a great performance off the back of a 5-0 drubbing by Campbelltown the week before.

“The 5-0 against Campbelltown I don’t look too much at because I changed a lot of things in the last 15 minutes to give some boys a run,” he said.

“But we started the game last Saturday the way we finished against Campbelltown, once we got a few things sorted the boys played much more like the way they can play and more like how we played against Raiders.

“That’s a positive for us and hopefully we’ve turned our form around and we can start this Saturday the way we finished against United.”

Atsikbasis said the draw against Birkalla was the deserved result, with plenty of positives to take from it heading into Saturday’s game.

“I think we played not too bad but we can seriously improve on our performance, I believe on the day a draw was a fair result.

“I believe we took the chances we had well, but we conceded two very cheap goals which we need to rectify; the team is still trying to gel with not only the new players to the team but also the structure.

“We’ve had an average start (to the season) but I feel like each week we are becoming more and more comfortable.”

Despite their strong performances in Rounds 1 and 3, Graystone believes that their position in the lower half of the table remains a fair indication.

“The table never lies.

“We are where we are for a good reason because we didn’t play well enough against Campbelltown and we didn’t play well enough against Adelaide United in those first 20 minutes.

“You get what you deserve in this league so no I don’t think it’s an unfair reflection, we deserve to be on the three points because that’s all we’ve earned.”

Graystone said that this weekend’s clash with Blue Eagles would again prove to be a difficult one for South.

“Blue Eagles are a very, very strong side especially at home.

“We always give a good account of ourselves against them, if we can keep the wide guys nice and quiet on Saturday we stand a good chance of coming away with three points.

“We have the quality in our squad to score goals, just at the moment we are leaking far too many.
Atsikbasis said that concentration was key for Blue Eagles.

“We have to concentrate for the 90 minutes, take the chances we always create and defend well.

“All this with hard work will give us the best chance for the three points.”

Written by Brendan Simpkins - @RealSimpkins