Football: City can't muck around with Levin

City's Cameron Hussey, seen here in the derby with Athletic Reserves, will want his team to run up an impressive scoreline against Levin AFC at Wembley Park today. Photo by Sharon Francis,

For the Big Orange Wanganui City 1sts at Wembley Park today the equation is simple for their Horizons Premiership clash with seventh-placed Levin AFC - goals, goals and more goals.

Having surrendered their lead of the Premiership in the shadow of the season's end with their 3-1 loss in the clutch game with Hokowhitu FC Rangers last weekend, City with their 11-3 record must put together a comprehensive victory over the visitors (5-8).

Ideally this would be by matching the 7-0 hammering City gave Levin at Donnelly Park in May.

City sit one point behind Hokowhitu (11-1-2) on the table with four games remaining, with the leaders facing Feilding United 1sts today as part of a slightly harder run home of opponents.

Having shared their two games this season, City have a slightly better differential by four goals, but having drastically reduced their scoring output since the balmy days of April and May when they nailed 40 goals in seven matches, even if City win all remaining fixtures and someone can hold Hokowhitu to a draw, the Premiership still very much hangs in the balance.

In May, Max Davidson (four goals) picked up a double, while Cameron Hussey, Jake Lockett, Carl Bond, Simon Petersen and Eli Fleming also got on the scoresheet.

At the time, the impact of the departures of Jamie Lambe and Jordan Joblin-Hall to the PN Marist club to play Central League had yet to be felt, while Bond would later suffer a costly meniscus tear.

Levin's biggest scalps this year have been one-off victories over the team's immediately above them on the table in Feilding United and North End, while also picking up a win over GVCA Wanganui Athletic Reserves and two against bottom-ranked Marist Development.

Meanwhile, Athletic Reserves coach Jason King has a statistic he is most proud of while he is available to take his development team down to face Palmerston North Boys High at Celaeno Park.

"I've got an unbeaten streak with games I've been away with the Reserves," he said.

Indeed, as King must usually give priority to the Devon Homes Wanganui Athletic 1sts in the Lotto Federation League, on the previous two weekends there has been a bye or the two squads were nearby, the Reserves (3-2-8) have picked up a draw and a win in King's presence.

The coach will need some of that black magic as the 13-man squad will be making do without senior players Daniel Timmins and Peter Czerwonka, out with injury, while regular goal keeper Thomas Dickson received a concussion playing for his Collegiate school team last Saturday morning.

King spoke with Dickson's father and the young man will be standing down for at least a couple of weeks.

"It's your head, if you stuff it up you can't just [carry on]. There's no pressure to come back."

Therefore, 1sts goalie Matt Calvert will be heading south to stay sharp ahead of next weekend's big clash with New Plymouth Rangers.

The same logic is being used with Scott Burney, who has hit a bit of a dry spell after swiftly raising seven goals earlier in the Federation League

"It worked for Quinn [Mailman]," said King.

"[Burney]'s missing finding the back of the net at the moment."

King will be expecting Mailman back from his five-week sojourn to England this coming week, and despite sending pictures of himself going on tough runs in the northern hemisphere summer, he will be starting on the bench for the 1sts against New Plymouth.

Both Premiership games start today at 2.45pm.

And tomorrow the Football Whanganui team will be desperately hunting victory No1 in their second-to-last GR Engineering Women's Federation League clash with Port Hill United.

Kickoff is 1pm.