Wellington Phoenix star Vince Lia is determined to mark the waring of the team’s 10-year anniversary shirt with victory over Western Sydney Wanderers at Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium on Saturday night.
Phoenix will don the commemorative kit for the first time this weekend when they face the Wanderers in Auckland.
Having been with club since its inception a decade ago, Lia couldn’t hide his pride at wearing the shirt which features the name of every player who has appeared for the club.
“I’m pretty proud to put this shirt on,” Lia said.
Looking through the names on the top it brings back a lot of good memories… hopefully we get the three points to go with it.
“A lot of good players have come through this club so to still be here it’s a bit of an honour.”
As one of Phoenix’s most famous goalscorers, Joint Interim Head Coach Chris Greenacre’s name also features on the shirt, and he is hoping that will help inspire the side on Saturday night.
“It’s all part of the occasion (wearing the anniversary shirt), a great part of our short history and it would be great to celebrate that with a win,” Greenacre said.
“As Des (Buckingham) mentioned we’ve worked very, very hard this week on getting that performance on the field so hopefully, collectively, all this will bond together for a good performance and a good result.”
The splendid second-half attacking performance pleased the Head Coaches and they have been focused on building on that display against the Wanderers at Mt Smart Stadium.
“The focus has been on trying to start the game, the way we started the game after 60 minutes last week, which is playing the game we want, which is attacking football,” Interim Head Coach Des Buckingham said.
“With the front three we started with last week, they would pose a problem for any backline in the league, so it’s been very much focused on our attacking game.”
Saturday, 17 December 2016
Wellington Phoenix v Western Sydney Wanderers FC
Mt Smart Stadium (Auckland)
Kick-Off: 7:35PM
Referee: Peter Green
TV Broadcast: Live coverage on Sky Sport 4 from 7:30pm
Join the conversation on Twitter using the hash-tag #WELvWSW
To purchase tickets visit Ticketmaster
Wellington Phoenix squad: 1.Glen MOSS (gk), 2.Jacob TRATT, 4.Roly BONEVACIA, 5.Ryan LOWRY, 7.Gui FINKLER, 8.Alex RODRIGUEZ, 9.Kosta BARBAROUSES, 11.Hamish WATSON, 12.Adam PARKHOUSE, 13.Marco ROSSI, 14.Alex RUFER, 16.Louis FENTON, 17.Vince LIA, 19.Tom DOYLE, 20.Lewis ITALIANO (gk), 21.Roy KRISHNA, 22.Andrew DURANTE (c), 23.Matthew RIDENTON
