The Wagga City Wanderers are full of excitement heading into the opening game of the 2019 NPL2 season this afternoon.

After previously managing the Riverina Rhinos in their first year of the National Premier Leagues set-up, experienced coach Ross Morgan believes the restructure of the Capital Football National Premier Leagues has drawn players back into the game.

“The shortened travel time for Wagga this year will be huge,” Morgan said.

“A few more local players have got involved due to that.”

“The six-hour journey to Sydney was stopping a lot of players for the last few seasons, so we’re really looking forward to getting across to Canberra”.

The Wanderers kick-off round one of the NPL2 season against the O’Connor Knights SC at Gissing Oval, today at 3pm.

Coming off a positive start to their pre-season, Wagga City have faltered slightly in the last few weeks leading into the season.

The Wanderers were eliminated from the FFA Cup during their pre-season campaign by Canberra White Eagles FC who defeated them 5-2.

The Wagga City FC head coach was honest in his appraisal of his team’s pre-season form.

“We’ve had a stop and start pre-season.”

“We had a good run of games early on, although a couple of cancelations probably put us behind the eight-ball going into that FFA Cup game,” said Morgan.

“The season has probably come two or three weeks early for us in how we’ve been preparing.

“We’ve still got a few players to come back in round two or three, so it’ll be a much different team to what went out against the White Eagles.

“There were a lot of under 20’s in that team and they did well but hopefully now with a few more senior players coming back in the next few weeks we should look to push on,” he continued.

The Wanderers face a challenging start in the opening three games of the league, fronting O’Connor Knights, Canberra White Eagles and ANU FC.

“I think we’ve got a tough start, if you look at the first three games it’s perhaps the top three teams from last season,” Morgan said.

“Hopefully we can hit the ground running, put in a good performance [against O’Connor] and look to move into the next couple of weeks.

“We’re just looking to get on the field, see where we are at in the first couple of games and push on from there on after Easter.”

Wagga City have made the most of their allotted visa players this season, bringing in two international recruits.

“We’ve got a couple of American imports who have just arrived, in Paul Milner and Frank Macias, but they won’t be available for at least the first game, pending their clearance,” said the Wanderers coach.

“The first-grade squad is looking a lot healthier than what it was last season.

“We’ve recruited well, we’ve put a lot of hard work in the off-season and we’re looking strong numbers wise.

“In terms of numbers, we’re lucky enough we’ve got a full first-grade and a full under 20’s squad to pick from each week,” said Morgan.

Making way for the new additions, Wagga City have also had a number of player departures in the off-season, as well as injuries that are preventing players from round one starts.

“We’ve lost a couple of the imports that we had last season that were only ever going to be here for one season, so we’ve replaced them like-for-like.”

“We’ve also actually just lost Caylum Barber to injury, so he’ll be missing the first game as well,” said Morgan.

However, the Wanderers will benefit from a host of local players returning from injury and availability in round two and three of the upcoming season.

Morgan highlighted the strength of the two NPL divisions and who may be the most difficult teams to come across in season 2019.

“You can see the standard in NPL2, look at the results of ANU and Narrabundah in the last couple weeks beating NPL1 teams, so I think it’s going to be tough for us going into the season,” said Morgan.

“We’ve been around NSW State League, which I think will be a similar sort of level to some of the teams we’ve been facing.

“You can only go off last season’s results, but O’Connor Knights, ANU and White Eagles look hard to beat.

“The strike force on the White Eagles who we just played was fantastic, Zinelabiddine Eljammoudi was exceptional,” he continued.

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