- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The Central Coast Mariners will be without banned striker Roy O’Donovan when they host Melbourne Victory on Friday night. Join The Roar for live scores from the game starting at 7:40pm AEDT.
O’Donovan was banned for eight weeks – the equal-second-longest ban in A-League history – for a headbutt on Wellington Phoenix’s Manny Muscat, leaving the Mariners without one of the central pieces of their attack.
That will make it all the more difficult for them to secure what would be a significant win as the bottom-placed side looks to make up some ground on the rest of the competition.
Even a win would not lift the Mariners off the bottom of the table as they currently find themselves four points behind Perth Glory in ninth. But, unless they want to finish the season with the wooden spoon in hand, they will have to start winning sometime.
They took their second success of the year, a 3-1 victory over the Phoenix, last week, and will look to continue that trend.
Victory are coming off what they hope will prove to have been a circuit-breaking 1-0 win over the Newcastle Jets last week.
They had gone five matches without a win in the lead-up to that, dropping from first to fifth on the table, where they currently sit.
The win over the Jets wasn’t pretty, but sometimes a win no matter how ugly is just what a team needs to break a bad run of play and get back on track. Victory will be hoping that’s the case here, as they look to secure their finals spot.
They have a handy buffer over the sixth-placed Wellington Phoenix at the moment, and haven’t fallen too far behind the others – they could finish as high as third this week with a win tonight, depending on how other results go.
Prediction: Melbourne Victory should be able to make it two wins a row tonight.
Are you the ultimate team manager? Pick your own superstar team and go head to head with other football fans for glory and cash prizes on Draftstars. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.