Shoring up a brittle defence and having a killer instinct at the other end of the park are essential prerequisites for the new-look franchise team who have shown enough signs they have what it takes to make the cut in the 2014-15 summer national league.
It isn't lost on Milne that they have yet to win at home after holding O-League campaigners Team Wellington to a 2-2 stalemate.
"We have to win at home before Christmas."
The Inland Revenue Department employee from Palmy sees his role with Haviland in the backline as one that provides leadership and organisation.
"Conceding five goals is obviously terrible and not something we would have hoped to happen."
Milne, who enjoys the view from the back with the responsibility to initiate attacking passages, accepts the back four plus the goalkeeper hold the portfolio for defence.
"But every player has defensive responsibilities because the way we play it has to happen all over the park," says the Palmerston North Marist player.
Bay United tend to sit back in defence before exploding into flurries of counter-attacks.
Defence is something he "took to naturally rather than scoring goals".
Milne is the older brother of Black Caps strike bowler Adam, 22, on tour in the United Arab Emirates.
Fin Milne's twin brother, Dom, younger by about five minutes, is also a footballer in the Youngheart Manawatu Youth team.
The Milne boys are sport nutters following in the footsteps of parents Margot, who played netball at high school, and Roy who took to rugby and cricket but never the beautiful game.
Why not rugby or cricket for the twins?
"My parents thought football was safer and we loved it from the first kick," Fin Milne says.
Besides, they had played cricket in summer but in year 10 "standing out on the field all day" didn't appeal.
"There's more dynamics to football. It's faster moving and more of a team sport than cricket," he says, pointing out cricket is an individual sport masquerading as a collective one.
It also offers year-round commitment so balancing it with other codes was demanding with studies.
Adam did follow them to football in winter with aplomb.
"He's a good footy player but he got recognised for cricket in CD and the Black Caps so he put it aside," Milne says of the cricketer who has tasted Chatham Cup glory with Wairarapa United over Bluewater Napier City Rovers.
Fin Milne secured American sport scholarships to University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, before switching to Wright State University in Ohio.
"I wasn't starting in the second soccer season with UCF so I decided to try a new place," he says, becoming the captain of a predominantly young side and also relishing experiencing a different part of the United States and its contrasting lifestyle.
"The quality of competition there was different from the NZFC here where you have a mixture of young and old.
"In the United States, you're dealing more with athleticism in colleges," he says, albeit accepting the players tend to pick up technical nous with "training all day".
With no premiership franchise in Manawatu for the past few summers, it was logical to gravitate to Bay United as the closest team to home.
"Brett got in touch and we worked our way from there," says Milne who in his late teens played for two seasons with the Youngheart Manawatu side who made the home-and-way losing semifinals against Auckland City.
