Gunners Face Test On Saturday

20170617 Wests v Panthers — Wests player Rei Nozaki rounds on the ball in his team’s 2nd Division clash with the Panthers; Wests went on to come out with a 2-1 win

June 17, 2017

Kingaroy team Gunners will play against Nanango’s Panthers at the Burnett Street Soccer Fields this Saturday, and it may turn into a pivotal match for both sides.

Last week Gunners 1st Division squad enjoyed a 6-nil win against Barambah, which was an improvement over Gunners 2-all draw with Wests the week before.

While the win against Barambah wasn’t entirely unexpected, given that most of the Bears’ squad had played in the 2nd Division game earlier the same day (where they beat Gunners 1-nil), the victory should help inspire the team.

Gunners have temporarily lost two key players – Will Ambrose and Lachlan Hurt, who left for a soccer tour of Germany on Thursday and won’t be back until early July.

So the rest of the team will need to ramp up their efforts in the next few rounds to make up for this.

Nanango’s 1st Division side, for their part, delivered a blistering 6-2 thumping to Wests last Saturday which has kept Wests 1st Division side in the lower half of the ladder.

This was partly to repay Wests for downing Panthers’ 2nd Division squad 2-1 earlier the same day, but mostly because the Panthers are once again shaping up as the team to beat in this year’s competition, following five unbroken years of premiership victories.

The Panthers top draw team are certainly not invincible – Gunners defeated them the first time the two sides met this year – but they are no easybeats, either, downing Gunners the next two times both teams met.

The aggressive, intimidatory style that has served the big cats so well since 2012 is something Gunners will have to shrug off if they want to gain ascendancy.

Gunners coach Debbie Ovens believes ramping up the side’s attack is the best strategy, and she will be trying to encourage her players to go down this road.

Panthers’ coach Lauren Mangan, for her part, will have little incentive to change the formula that has delivered the Panthers a seemingly unending stream over victories over the past five years, and seems set to do it again in 2017.

Who’ll triumph at Nanango’s Burnett Street sports grounds this Saturday?

Most of the smart money seems to be on the Panthers, but Gunners could well produce a surprise.

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In last Saturday’s Women’s Division games, Barambah scored a 2-1 victory over the Gunnettes, and the lady Panthers defeated Wests 3-1.

Barambah’s victory was a morale booster for the team, which has had to endure a few losses this season.

If they stay true to form, the Lady Bears tend to get better and better as the season progresses, and last year they wound up contesting the Grand Finals.

But the clash was also a bit of a boost for the plucky Gunnettes, who have shown solid improvement this year after 2016’s bitterly disappointing results.

The lady Panthers win against Wests was also one where both teams took something positive away from the encounter.

The lady Panthers, for their part, continued to keep a firm grasp on the top of the Women’s Division league tale, pursuing a similar attacking, aggressive style to their men’s 1st Division squad.

Wests, for their part, proved they were able to find a hole in the Panthers’ defence and hold their opponents down to a tight game where the margins between victory and defeat were fairly narrow.

This weekend, it will be the Gunnettes turn to come up against the lady Panthers, while Wests will battle it out with the lady Bears.

Here, the smart money is probably backing Panthers and Barambah … but again, Wests and Gunnettes could turn the tables and if they do, they will be very interesting matches to watch.