Saturday evening’s highly anticipated F3 Derby will be the 16th of experienced defender Storm Roux’s career, but the right back is as excited as ever as he and his teammates prepare for what he describes as ‘a huge game’ at Our Paradise.
Speaking to the press ahead of Saturday’s Isuzu UTE A-League fixture, Roux said:
“It’s a huge game, it’s one that you mark on the calendar as a Mariners player, the Derby. To get our first points of the season against them is the goal, so we’re definitely going to come out firing and it’s going to add just a little bit of extra motivation for us.”
Earlier this month, Roux hit 150 A-League appearances for the Mariners. He has 169 in total for the club, ranking him fifth in our all-time appearance records. This puts him ahead of fellow New Zealander Michael McGlinchey (163), behind only Josh Rose and Alex Wilkinson (206), current Sporting Director Matt Simon (238) and record appearance holder John Hutchinson (271).
“It’s really exciting, a huge achievement and probably one that I never thought I’d hit with the Mariners,” Roux said.
“I’ve spent eight seasons here so far and hopefully many more to come.”
Roux and the team have had a weekend break after a congested start to the season including overseas travel before the International Break, which the full-back believes came at a good time and has allowed for a solid period of work on the training pitch under Mark Jackson.
“I think the international break has come at a really good time. We’re getting some hard training in, we’ve had a lot of travel, a lot of midweek games lately, so it’s been hard to get the work in on the training pitch,” he said.
“Like I’ve said before, I think we’re not far off. We’ve been in every single game so far this season and been unlucky to not get points on the board.”
Prior to the two-week gap, the Mariners had endured a challenging schedule of three games in eight days, including travel to Perth and to Bali, before returning home to face Brisbane Roar.
Roux admits that the demanding fixture list has had an impact on the side but refused to accept excuses and called upon the whole squad to stand up and be counted as the Mariners aim for an upturn in results, starting this Saturday.
“I think it’s only natural that more travel, flights midweek and games midweek will take its toll on you when you come into the A-League games on the weekend, but we knew that’s what it was going to be like coming into the season, so we have to deal with it,” he explained.
“We need everyone firing, we need the whole squad ready and available.”
Roux backed up his rallying cry by placing on record his confidence in his teammates and believes this squad has the best culture and morale he has ever seen over his decade-long professional career.
“Obviously we lost quality players, we lost a lot of goals, a lot of the attacking players left but we have confidence in the players coming in that they can do the job and I’m sure they will. We’ve got really good players that we signed, and I think in the coming weeks they’ll show everyone that,” he said.
“The culture and the morale we have in this team is the best I’ve ever been a part of. Everyone is hungry, we’ve got a young team that are hungry for success and hungry to make a name for themselves and prove everyone wrong really, so motivation isn’t hard to come by in this team.”
Tickets are still available to purchase for Saturday’s game, the first of four consecutive home games in the space of two weeks, an important and exciting period for the Mariners that you don’t want to miss. Buy them HERE!
