{"id":12879,"date":"2025-02-27T05:56:02","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T16:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=12879"},"modified":"2025-02-27T05:56:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T16:56:02","slug":"auckland-fc-trying-to-stay-humble-as-a-league-lead-grows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=12879","title":{"rendered":"Auckland FC trying to stay &#8216;humble&#8217; as A-League lead grows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The talk of silverware for Auckland FC has been unavoidable all season.<\/p>\n<p>It started with owner\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/sport\/531271\/auckland-fc-owner-bill-foley-talks-ambitions-for-club-and-his-love-for-new-zealand\">Bill Foley&#8217;s<\/a>\u00a0statement that he wanted the team to win the A-League within three years &#8211; that was before his newest sporting side even had a name.<\/p>\n<p>Foley&#8217;s penchant for trophies is something that coach Steve Corica mentions regularly.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/sport\/531151\/auckland-fc-ready-to-make-a-league-debut-after-short-lead-in\">Corica and CEO Nick Becker<\/a>\u00a0know what the expectation is.<\/p>\n<p>But as the weeks countdown in the season and Auckland FC have a buffer over the chasing pack more people are saying the Premiers Plate is Auckland&#8217;s to lose.<\/p>\n<p>Midfielder Jake Brimmer believes their latest win &#8211; a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/alert-top\/542638\/a-league-as-it-happened-auckland-fc-demolish-phoenix-6-1\">statement 6-1 victory over Wellington Phoenix<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; shows what the side is capable of.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It sends a massive message to the league but also to us as well I think we&#8217;ve proved that we&#8217;re a championship team,&#8221; Brimmer said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All the staff have signed players that want to win and want to win championships and trophies&#8230; we&#8217;re in a good position but it is important to remain humble now and just keep doing our thing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Brimmer has played in the A-League since 2017 with seasons for Perth Glory and his hometown club Melbourne Victory before joining Auckland so has a good gauge on where the team is at.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For the past three or four weeks our performances have only gotten better and better.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You not only win the derby, dominate a derby, it&#8217;s very easy to get side-tracked and to stop doing the little things you do throughout the week but we&#8217;ve got a good bunch of boys that again want to win silverware and we know how important it is for this game [against second-placed Adelaide United].&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Auckland has a 12 win, three draw and two loss record at this point in the season to be on 39 competition points &#8211; eight more than Adelaide United.<\/p>\n<p>Brimmer was part of Glory&#8217;s premiership winning side in the 2018\/19 season but had not won an A-League Grand Final.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They don&#8217;t come around very often championships so I&#8217;m trying to get everyone to remain humble and look at it game by game rather than look at the future.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Corica also wanted to keep his side on track ahead of Saturday&#8217;s top of the table clash with Adelaide United in Auckland.<\/p>\n<p>Back in 2016\/17 Corica was on the coaching staff of a Sydney FC side that won the premiership but failed to make the Grand Final so he is pushing Auckland to go all the way.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve seen a lot of teams after a win like that [against Wellington] that they go and lose the next match so we don&#8217;t want to be part of that we&#8217;ve spoken about it to the players and they know they have to continue doing what they&#8217;re doing to win especially against Adelaide they&#8217;re a very good team, a very attacking team, very quick team, as well so we&#8217;ll have to be at our best against them,&#8221; Corica said.<\/p>\n<p>Corica said for Auckland to have their biggest win of the season against their closest geographical rivals a week before taking on their closest rivals on the points ladder was &#8220;perfect timing&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To do it in a derby is amazing to score six goals, to win all three derbies is also very special so obviously we&#8217;ll see [Wellington] next year but I was really pleased with our first year against Wellington.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"photo-captioned photo-captioned-full photo-cntr eight_col \"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.rnztools.nz\/rnz\/image\/upload\/s--zfm9_RkM--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1740198129\/4KBKSNK_250222_AucklandFCvPhoenix_013_JPG?_a=BACCd2AD\" alt=\"Nando Pijnaker of Auckland FC collides with Corban Piper of Wellington Phoenix.\nAuckland FC v Wellington Phoenix FC Round 20 A-League football match at Go Media Stadium, Auckland, New Zealand on Saturday 22 February 2025. \u00a9 Photo: Andrew Cornaga \/ Photosport\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\"><span class=\"caption\">Nando Pijnaker of Auckland FC collides with Corban Piper of Wellington Phoenix.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Photo:\u00a0Andrew Cornaga\/www.photosport.nz<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Auckland have nine games remaining in the regular season. The Premiers Plate goes to the team that finishes the top of the standings after the regular season.<\/p>\n<p>The path to the Grand Final this season involves Elimination Finals for teams that finish the season in third, fourth, fifth and sixth place.<\/p>\n<p>Winners in the Elimination Finals progress to a two-leg semi-finals against the first and second placed teams from the regular season.<\/p>\n<p>The semi-finals winners play the Grand Final to be hosted by the highest placed team on the weekend of 31 May to 1 June.<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The talk of silverware for Auckland FC has been unavoidable all season. It started with owner\u00a0Bill Foley&#8217;s\u00a0statement that he wanted the team to win the A-League within three years &#8211; that was before his newest sporting side even had a name. Foley&#8217;s penchant for trophies is something that coach Steve Corica mentions regularly. Corica and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12881,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12879\/revisions\/12881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}