Canberra Croatia striker Nick Pratezina netted twice on the weekend leading his team to a 4-0 win over Tigers FC at Deakin Stadium, in the process increasing the host’s lead at the top of the table to nine points.
Pratezina’s brace took him to eleven goals for the season, and a joint lead of the Golden Boot race with Monaro Panthers’ ex-Croatia frontman Daniel Barac. His pair of slick finishes were contrasting in style, but equally effective.
“It was a good performance from myself, but credit to the boys,” Pratezina said. “You know we love to turn up, and as long as I’m at the end of the goals and someone’s scoring them that’s all that matters.
“It’s the beauty of being the top team, we have these top players that all can do a job when asked so whether I start, whether I’m coming off the bench I just try to do my job that’s it, everyone does the same.”
Pratezina’s brilliant second goal was a chip over Tigers’ 6ft 5’ goalkeeper Willem Lejeune, an accurate and well executed shot that brought him his eleventh goal of the season, and a finish that he thoroughly enjoyed.
“I just saw Spas (Tony Spaseski) and a couple of the defenders around the box, and I just checked back and saw the space in goal and thought oh I’ll just have a go, and it worked out well.”
A close loss last week to Gungahlin put a dent in Croatia’s morale levels when they were defeated 4-5 at home by Gungahlin United, this week they were able to return to form to secure the win against Tigers.
“This is much better,” Pratezina commented. “Last time we weren’t at our best, we didn’t put in the effort, but today we just wanted to get one back on them and it was a big game, If they won it would be pretty close to the top and we just wanted to extend that lead back at the top.”
Pratezina felt that this win was necessary to keep their place at the top of the table as Croatia secured av victory that extended the gap between them and second place to nine points.
Considering Tigers took the win last time these teams met, and they were second place, this was important for Croatia to secure their spot in first place. They are in arms reach of the title now but are always looking forward to preparing for their next game, and never taking their opponents for granted.
“We just trained during the week as we did, but there was a bit of extra motivation because they beat us last time of course, so we did what we usually do and it worked out well,” the striker admitted.
“We talked about the Gungahlin game. It wasn’t a great performance last week, mentally we lost our heads a bit we were having a go at each other. However, we just put it all behind us, We know we can defend, we didn’t concede many goals before last week and we just went back to basics today.
“We will take it one game at a time. If we look to far ahead then that’s when we’re not at our best because it’s not 100% focused on the game at hand, we don’t want to be thinking about a game in two weeks when we’ve got a game just as important today.
“Our full focus is on Monaro, if we can get the three points there again that’ll be great, just keep pushing towards the title, our eyes are on the title, and then when the metro stars game comes up we’ll focus on that.”
Canberra Croatia are next in action this weekend when they meet Monaro Panthers in a top-of-the-table clash at Deakin Stadium with the match commencing at 17:30. You can watch this game, and all matches from the NPL olive and free on the capital Football YouTube channel.
Words: Maddie Shrewsbury
