Melbourne Victory opens the Foxtel Y-League season with a trip to Brisbane Roar on Saturday.
Summary
Victory makes the trip to Eric Evans Oval for the opening game of the campaign in Conference A.
It is back in action for the first time since the NPL2 West season finished in early September as it finished ninth on the table.
Victory will again play Roar, City, Perth Glory and Adelaide United twice during the Foxtel Y-League, with the conference winner advancing to the Grand Final.
Brisbane was crowned champion last season, beating the Western Sydney Wanderers in the decider.
Victory and Brisbane are meeting for the first time since the final round of the 2018/19 campaign, when Roar claimed a 2-0 win in Melbourne.
Jay Barnett and Lleyton Brooks have joined Victory from Brisbane, while Joshua Varga and Dalibor Markovic arrive from City and Luis Lawrie-Lattanzio joins from Adelaide.
Lawrie-Lattanzio and Birkan Kirdar, who are both 17, were part of the Joeys squad that reached the last 16 at the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Brazil.
Head coach Gareth Naven’s pre-match thoughts
“This is week six, the boys had four weeks off. We’ve got a phase of about 50 players that have an opportunity to play in the Foxtel Y-League. We’ve got to register, by the rules and registrations, 23 and then we have some academy pool players. We have an environment where people can progress when they’re performing well and to be honest your age does not matter so it’s an environment where it’s been highly competitive. The players are aware that players can develop themselves individually in training and I suppose as well they get the opportunity at times to integrate with the first team in their training sessions. Overall, training has been good, we’ve had a lot of interaction with the first team as well in regards to players going to them and helping them as well. For our players, getting the experience to see what it’s like in the A-League with A-League players, it’s been perfect for a lot of them.”
Match details
Brisbane Roar v Melbourne Victory
Eric Evans Oval, Bundamba
Saturday, November 16, 2019
Kick-off: 11.00am AEDT
