Image: Bulent Yontem
Avondale FC have filled a key piece of their jigsaw with the addition of forward Craig Carley for the 2017 NPL Victoria season.
The marksman joins from Hume City, where he averaged better than a goal every other game as he netted seven times in just 13 games since joining mid-season.
Finding the net at times was Avondale’s achilles heel last season, with the bulk of the scoring responsibility falling at the feet of Jonatan Germano, who netted 14 times from midfield while the next best tallies were four each by Matt Sanders and Oleksiy Khrapko.
In plugging the gap up front, Carley seems the perfect fit as a natural goalscorer with a prolific record in Victorian football since landing from overseas at the Cobram Victory in 2010.
The Shepparton-based 31-year-old had scored six goals for NPL2 outfit Goulburn Valley Suns before his Hume move in 2016, and in the NPL era his 2015 tally of 33 nearly won NPL2 top goalscorer honors, while his 2014 tally of 14 led his club’s charts in their inaugural season in the top flight.
Avondale have strengthened across the park this off-season, adding Chris Oldfield between the sticks, Ramazan Tavsancioglu and Petar Franjic in defence, Evan Chrsitodoulou in midfield and now Carley in attack as the club looks to mount a finals campaign in 2017.
Four of the aforementioned players are also all former Hume City teammates, with Christodoulou meanwhile joining from Green Gully.
Meanwhile, Zoran Markovski also joins the club as a senior assistant to head coach Anthony Barbieri, also joining from Hume City after departing alongside Lou Acevski last season.