Soccer: Winning Kingz face changes

By TERRY MADDAFORD

The Football Kingz have put their Australian National Soccer League season back on track, but face more team changes when they play Marconi on Friday night.

While not being drawn into any discussion on the refereeing in Saturday night's deserved 2-0 away win over Gippsland Falcons, assistant coach Shane Rufer was obviously upset that Lee Jones was shown his seventh yellow card of the season and will serve a two-match suspension.

The Kingz will also be without Batram Suri for Friday's game at Ericsson Stadium because he will be on international duty for the Solomon Islands in the Melanesia Cup as they try to qualify for the Oceania Nations Cup in Tahiti in June.

Suri scored his first goal for the Kingz on Saturday with a well-taken solo effort in the 78th minute.

Earlier, he had provided the buildup for Jeff Campbell's 32nd-minute opening goal, also his first for the Auckland-based club.

"We thoroughly deserved our win," said Rufer.

"Both teams had a couple of early chances. After we scored they had us under real pressure but we held on until halftime and came out and played well in the second spell.

"We are very pleased with the result. We had to change a few things but players at this level should be good enough to play in a variety of positions," Rufer said.

"Daniel Duke had a good start in goal for us, coming away with a clean sheet in what was a good defensive effort.

"We just have to work on stopping individual errors, which often come because players switch off."

The Kingz used their full 14-strong squad, with Wynton Rufer replacing Jones for the last 15 minutes, Noah Hickey coming on for Campbell and Leigh Kenyon replacing Marcus Stergiopoulos.

"We are now looking forward to Friday night's game," said Shane Rufer.

"It will be interesting to see how the public respond to the change of venue.

"We will have John Lammers back from suspension and others such as Robbie Middleby, David Moya and Aaron Silva could be in the squad."