New-look Eastern Suburbs have made a major statement in their opening match of the ISPS Handa Premiership season, putting five unanswered goals past a shell-shocked Hawke’s Bay United this afternoon.

Despite making the play-offs in the previous campaign, the Suburbs squad has undergone a makeover with many members of the Western Suburbs team that made the ISPS Handa Chatham Cup final heading north as part of the Auckland-based club’s relationship with the Ole Football Academy.

Half a dozen made their debuts at a warm Madills Farm today but it was one of the few survivors from last season that got the ball rolling early on, All White Andre de Jong breaking away before lobbing Hawke’s Bay goalkeeper Mackenzie Waite.

De Jong then turned provider, embarking on an evasive run before presenting Kingsley Sinclair with an empty net to tap into. That made it 2-0 at the break and any hopes the visitors may have had of pulling off a remarkable second-half turnaround were extinguished when a powerful header from Mohamed Awad made it three on the hour.

Sinclair soon popped up with a composed finish to notch a brace before Nando Pijnaker headed home to get an exciting new era off to a perfect start for Suburbs.

Coach Danny Hay was delighted with the manner of the victory but is keen to keep his players’ feet on the ground.

“It was very pleasing but it’s just a start and there’s still areas we can improve on,” he said.

“We moved the ball really well and some of the young players really stepped up. You’ve got somebody like Campbell Strong making his first start at this level at 16, I thought he did really well but he was one of many. We’re not getting carried away because it’s only the first game of the season, we’ll just review the game and look forward to next week now.”

Bay counterpart Brett Angell felt the efforts of his own side did not help their cause.

“I think it was a lot to do with a lack of concentration – we created our own problems, certainly with the first two goals,” he said.

“We got punished for that and then in the second half I thought if we had taken a chance at 2-0 then it might have been an interesting situation. But we didn’t and two set pieces have then undone us from a concentration point of view,” he added.

“But fair play to Eastern Suburbs, they’ve emphatically beaten us and the good thing for us is that we have another 17 games to try to put it right. We need to because obviously this wasn’t the start we were looking for. We need to take the learning that if we concentrate a little bit better then we can make teams work so much harder to score goals than we’ve allowed them to today.”

The first full round of the ISPS Handa Premiership will be completed tomorrow with all other sides in action.

For the table and other information please click here

ISPS Handa Premiership Match Week Two

Eastern Suburbs 5 (Andre de Jong 7’, Kingsley Sinclair 27’, 74’, Mohamed Awad 61’, Nando Pijnaker 83’)
Hawke’s Bay United 0
HT: 2-0

Canterbury United vs Southern United
English Park, Christchurch
Sunday 21 October, 1pm

Hamilton Wanderers vs Waitakere United
Porritt Stadium, Hamilton
Sunday 21 October, 2pm

Auckland City vs Tasman United
Kiwitea Street, Auckland
Sunday 21 October, 2pm

Wellington Phoenix vs Team Wellington
Westpac Stadium, Wellington
Sunday 21 October, 2.10pm

Article added: Saturday 20 October 2018