With only two weeks to go in the National Youth League competition, Brisbane Roar Youth are going the extra yards to ensure they finish the season with a bang when they take on the Newcastle Jets Youth at Adamstown Oval on Friday.
As the side prepares for its second away trip in consecutive weeks, the Roar Youth side will look to build on their promising performance in last week-s narrow 1-0 loss to Central Coast Mariners Youth.
While the side has struggled over recent weeks, Brisbane Roar Youth Head Coach John Sime was buoyed by the performance of his side considering he was missing four key players who had been called up to the Brisbane Roar Hyundai A-League team.
“Obviously it-s been tough the past few weeks, however if the boys put in a performance similar to what they did last week I will be quite happy and I have no doubt that they will get the result,” Sime said.
“While we will most likely lose some boys to the first team again, the side is fully fit and have been training well so there are no excuses for a bad performance on Friday.”
Standing in the way of the Brisbane Youth side is a Newcastle Jets Youth team still riding high after scoring an injury time winner to defeat Perth Glory Youth away on the weekend.
While impressed with how his side had fared against the Jets Youth earlier in the season, Sime felt that his side had to ensure they could give a dominant performance on match day before they focussed too much on their opposition.
“Last time we played the Jets the boys put in one of their better performances of the season, but that doesn-t give us reason to believe that it won-t be a tough fixture,” Sime said.
“Currently my players have to focus on our their own game, we have to guarantee that we can perform to our best when it matters and as I have said to the players all season, if they perform to a high standard the result usually follows.”
With the season coming to a close, Sime believes that his players deserve to go out on a positive note.
“The players have given their all from week one and it would be unfortunate if they ended the season on such a low,” Sime said.
“We will be treating each of our last two games as a cup final, the boys have everything to play for and I hope they can turn their hard work into positive results, starting with a win on Friday.”