Football: Fans motivating Force to deliver first win of season

North Force are hoping to get their first win of the season this weekend for the fans. Pictured is Josh Hacker during last year's campaign. Photo/File

As club teams prepare for their fixtures on Saturday, North Force are hoping to get over the line for their fans.

Coach Russell Baddeley said his side were gutted about last weekend's loss to Waiuku, adding that they had worked on fitness and skills this week.

On Saturday North Force will aim to knock over Papakura in Kamo from 2.45pm, something Baddeley believes is achievable.

"We need to react fairly quickly to what the other teams are doing," he said, noting that the teams North Force were playing were ones he'd never seen due to his side dropping down a division in the off-season.

"Our target is to get promotion back to division one and with the squad of players we've got I believe that we can do it.

"I think you'll find there'll be two-three teams at the top who will be quite strong and looking to get back up. The question is can we get amongst those top teams and pick up points against the average ones?

"We felt last week we ran out of steam in the last 15-20 minutes so we'll be sharpening up on the fitness side of things - and we felt individual errors contributed to the defensive errors."

In the back of Baddeley's mind is the knowledge that Papakura won their first-round encounter against Lynn Avon 8-1, but he says he's not reading too much into that.

"We're expecting a tough, close encounter like the previous one," he said of last week's 4-3 loss to Waiuku in the 94th minute. "I hear Lynn Avon are pretty weak so it doesn't mean Papakura will necessarily be strong, we may even tweak our defence.

"We had a good crowd last week and didn't quite get over the line for them so this week hopefully we can."

This week North Force welcome back Cody Lacour and Joel Crawford, who have been unavailable due to work commitments, giving them a full-strength squad.

Baddeley was confident his strike force of Keegan Baddeley, Steve Schimmel and Josh Hacker will get goals and said if they defended well they would have every chance of winning.