Sunbury United holds the cards in fight for promotion

Jayden Mercieca scored four goals on Saturday. Picture Shawn Smits.

By Tara Murray

Sunbury United did its hopes of promotion no harm with a massive win against La Trobe University in FFV state league 3 north-west.

Playing a catch-up game, Sunbury had the perfect opportunity to close the gap on the sides above it in the promotion race.

Facing bottom side La Trobe for a second straight week, Sunbury was in no mood to mess around and stormed to a 6-0 win.

Sunbury’s Daniel Moore said it was a clinical performance.

“We played them last week, but we had to go in [and treat] it as a new game regardless of the opposition,” he said.

“We had all the play and all the opportunities.

“La Trobe tried hard, but we were too good.

“We had so many opportunities to score and could have had another three or four goals on top of it.”

Moore said it was a fantastic team performance.

Jayden Mercieca scored four of the goals and it moves him to the top of the goalscoring tally for the division this season.

More importantly, the win moves Sunbury from fifth spot up to second.

Epping City has already claimed the title and promotion, but second spot and the other promotion spot is up for grabs.

Sunbury sits equal on points with Sebastopol Vikings, but has a nine goal better goal difference.

Moore said they have to continue winning to stay in second spot.

He said they were thrilled to be in the position they are in at this stage of the season.

Two of their past three matches are against other sides looking to knock them out of second.

“It’s in our hands,” he said.

“We’re trying to not look too far ahead. We’ll consider each game in isolation and each game is as important as the next one.”

Moore said the atmosphere around the club was really good, with the senior side having not been in this position for a long time.