Soccer: Yeo delighted to get off the mark for Knights

It mightn't be the prettiest goal he's scored, but New Zealand Knight Simon Yeo is happy just to have got on the board in the A-League soccer competition.

Yeo latched on to a booming clearance by keeper Danny Milosevic to head home and set the Knights on the way to a 2-0 upset over the Central Coast Mariners at Gosford last Saturday.

"Any striker will tell you it's always good to score, so I was delighted," he said.

"It was a bit 'route one', but hey, it doesn't matter how you score, as long as it goes in."

Shortly after that 70th minute effort, Yeo went off with a recurrence of a groin injury.

Fellow forward Sean Devine, who came off the bench, also got his first goal of the season to seal victory for the Knights.

Yeo and Devine are set to be back in action in Newcastle on Sunday after manager John Adshead chose an unchanged 15-man squad.

Yeo said he had come through the match against the Mariners well despite not lasting the 90 minutes.

"My groin was tightening up at the end and I thought it was best to come off," he said.

"I didn't really want to take any chances. It was a good move, because Sean came on and put one in."

Yeo, 31, arrived in Auckland with a goalscoring reputation, netting 21 times in his final season with English League Two club Lincoln City.

But his preparations with the Knights were disrupted by his groin injury.

He missed the opening round loss to the Queensland Roar, making his A-League debut off the bench in the home defeat to Sydney FC a week later.

Yeo said individual errors were largely to blame for the Knights' lack of points from the first two rounds, and victory over the Mariners had lifted spirits.

"The confidence's probably gone up a bit, but it was there anyway," he said.

"We had been playing well, but we just didn't have the breaks. The other games were down to individual mistakes. Obviously we cut them out and we got a vital victory."

Yeo described the A-League as being similar to the standard he was used to in England.

One thing that was different was playing just once a week, especially after his heavy haul of "over 56 games" in his last English season, which didn't end until June.

He was happy with the extra time between matches in the A-League, although the schedule in England, while tough, did have its advantages.

"The good thing about playing Saturday-Tuesday is, if you get beat on Saturday, you can put it right on Tuesday."

Meanwhile, Adshead wasn't getting carried away by the fact that Yeo and Devine had opened their accounts for the Knights.

"They weren't brought here for development," he said.

"We signed a certain number of players with experience, and Yeo and Devine are two of those."

Both had been regular goalscorers in their careers, "and we expect exactly the same from them in this league".

Devine, 33, an Irish B international, holds records at English clubs Barnet (47) and Wycombe Wanderers (41) for most all-time goals.

- NZPA