Entering their second week of Pre-Season, Brisbane Roar have hit the ground running under new Head Coach Ross Aloisi.
Involving many of Brisbane Roar’s NPL players in pre-season training in the first two weeks, Aloisi has been keen to give young talent an experience in the professional environment.
NPL players to join A-League training have included Riley Gill, Trent Millard, Thomas Waddingham, Cher Deng, Noah McGrath and Damon Gorrell.
“It’s been great to see how they [NPL Players] go. The vibe has been really positive in the first week and training has been really upbeat,” Aloisi said.
Week one kicked off with Aloisi stressing the importance of club values and positive culture, with a focus on implementing his playing style, passing drills, and positional games.
“The goal has been to change the mindset of the playing group, to have a winning mentality and also a professional mentality towards training and playing style.”
“It’s been really positive and really well accepted.”
Returning Queenslanders Alex Parsons and Matt Acton join the squad for week two of pre-season, with Corey Brown who has also returned.
“It’s great to be working with Corey again, I worked with him for three seasons when I was last here. That second season we worked a lot on his defensive side of the game, and he won player of the year so I’m super excited to work with Corey, as are our new coaching staff.”
“These are all proud Queenslanders that will fight for the Brisbane Roar shirt,” Aloisi added.
With Brisbane Roar’s Australia Cup campaign kicking off in August, Aloisi aims to expose his squad to as many pre-season games as possible before the first competitive fixture.
The club’s first competitive fixture of the 2023/24 season in the Australia Cup will be away against the winner of the playoff between Newcastle Jets and Melbourne Victory.
Aloisi doesn’t have a preference which team he plays.
“Whichever team we play, they’re both going to be a great experience for us, they both play two different brands of football.”
“We know Victory under Tony Popovic will be difficult, and Robbie Stanton at Newcastle has his own playing style so that will be something new for us to contend with but either one will be great for us because it’s the Australia cup, we want to win everything, but it’s also about building for this coming A-League season,” Aloisi said.
Jay O’Shea returns to training this week. Tom Aldred is due back next week after getting married in the off-season.
Isuzu UTE A-League contracted players:
| 29 | Matt | Acton |
| 5 | Tom | Aldred |
| 17 | Carlo | Armiento |
| 3 | Corey | Brown |
| 1 | Macklin | Freke |
| 12 | Taras | Gomulka |
| 19 | Jack | Hingert |
| 13 | Henry | Hore |
| 11 | Jez | Lofthouse |
| 99 | Ayom | Majok |
| 10 | Nikola | Mileusnic |
| 2 | Scott | Neville |
| 32 | James | Nikolovski |
| 26 | Jay | O’Shea |
| 15 | Noah | Smith |
| 27 | Kai | Trewin |
| 35 | Louis | Zabala |
| 22 | Alex | Parsons |
