SOCCER - Bring it on! Christie's boys ready to play

It is game on for his new Wellington Phoenix A-League football team this weekend, the debut for the new club now based in the capital and Christie says the signs are looking good for the season ahead.
A 2-1 win over Melbourne in Australia during the pre-season contest will see them take some confidence into the opening match, the former FC Whangarei midfielder and current Kiwi international said.
"The boys are buzzing, we've had a good pre-season ... and we've had a couple of good results with a couple of others not so ideal but the performances have all been pretty positive, so we're quite confident that we'll be competitive on Sunday," he said.
The team has come together well under the watchful eye of coach Ricki Herbert who seems to have pulled off something of a coup by shaping a team of strangers into a competitive team - over a very short off-season.
"It was tough for us. We came together later than other teams and had to put 22 players together and then get to know each other in the space of a few months, that was tough but everyone's getting on really well," Christie said.
Herbert has continued with a theme in the preparation that he is well known for - he has demanded a high level of fitness.
"We've worked pretty hard on the fitness, we seem to have been doing an awful lot of running but it's been positive and that's going to hold us in good stead when we get started."
Christie said the four Brazilians - Daniel Cortes, Felipe Campos, George Paladini and Cleberson Gois - have blended well with the seven Aussies and 11 Kiwis and have added another level to the team.
"They're making the team tick at the moment while the rest of us are doing all the hard grafting so it's a good little mix," he said.
"We've got the Kiwi and Aussie boys working hard and busting a gut for the team and while the Brazilians are also capable of that, they've also got that added flair so Ricki has given them more of a free role in the team to go and express themselves and we've seen what they're capable of ... Daniel in particular has been outstanding and we're seeing more from Felipe now that he's fit," he said.
Christie said there is a feeling in the squad that they should avoid the mistakes of their predecessors the Football Kings and the Knights.
"We don't want to go into the season making predictions.
"We think we're going to be fairly competitive with the squad we've got and we'll just going out there every week to try and get some results on the park.
"After a few months people will be able to make their own minds up as to what should be an acceptable goal for us in the league this season."