Geelong Holiday Inn Match Preview: Royals look to continue unbeaten start against in-form Nunawading
Essendon Royals’ senior men’s side will look to continue their fast start to the 2024 season, when they take on Nunawading City at Cross Keys Reserve on Friday night at 7:30 PM.
Our weekly previews are brought to you by the Geelong Holiday Inn, as we look ahead to the upcoming rounds of action in both the league and Dockerty Cup.
Royals’ unbeaten start is still intact heading into the weekend after a hard fought 1-1 draw against North Sunshine Eagles last week.
Watch the highlights below from our 1-1 draw with North Sunshine Eagles.
Jordan Adeyemi scored his fourth goal in the league this season to open the scoring before Ndue Mujeci pulled one back after half-time.
Essendon went down to ten just prior to Mujeci’s equaliser, after Dean Clarke was sent off in his return game, but Michael Ferrante’s side did enough to hang on to a point.
The focus now turns to a clash with a red-hot Nunawading side, who are unbeaten in their last three games after a slow start to the season, ahead of a busy week for the Royals – who have both league and Dockerty Cup duties to contend with.
Nunawading defeated Goulburn Valley Suns 3-1 last weekend, with Alex Kubenko scoring a first-half hat-trick in the resounding victory at Mahoneys Reserve.
Kubenko, along with Daniel Maclennan and Alexander Dimitriou have all been dynamic in front of goal to start the season, with the latter duo scoring three and four goals respectively this season.
This will be something the Royals defence will have to deal with this week, but the defence, for the most part, has been solid to begin the campaign, only shipping seven goals in their opening six matches.
Royals will be without Clarke for the contest after his red card last week.
The Under 23s will be in action at 6:15 PM, just prior to the senior men kicking off at Cross Keys.
The boys came away with a 2-1 win last week against the Eagles, registering their third win of the season.
Their opponents this week, Nunawading, sit on the same amount of points after six games but are coming into the contest off the back of a 2-0 defeat at the hands of the Suns last weekend.
The seniors match will be streamed live on our Facebook page.