Welcome back one and all to Injury Time for the launch of our LIVE! coverage for the 2010/11 football seasons around the world!

All Smiles.. Will the Heart beat on their debut?

Tonight we begin with the curtain-raiser to the Australian A-League season with new Victorian side Melbourne Heart debuting against the Central Coast Mariners.

If you’re interested on some info on the two teams tonight read on, but if you’re only interested in the match scroll right down for the LIVE! coverage!

Melbourne Heart

The Heart, whilst competing in their first A-League season, are coached by John van’t Schip and feature many seasoned veterans from other A-League clubs. Some of this talent includes former Sydney FC trio Simon Colosimo, Clint Bolton and John Aloisi, Socceroo Michael Beauchamp and young Dutchman Rutger Worm.

Central Coast Mariners

Meanwhile, the Mariners are coming of an inconsistent season in 2009/10 where they failed to qualify for finals. This led to Lawrie McKinna stepping down and being replaced with former Australian National coach Graham Arnold. However, they haven’t done any outstanding transfers and whilst Jess Vanstrattan comes in for Danny Vukovic there were not many other big moves.

TAB Sportsbet

Heart             $1.70
Draw             $3.40
Mariners        $3.70

The Heart’s roster obviously has bookies convinced with the Melbourne side massive favourites to win their debut game.

Prediction

Heart 2 – 1 Mariners

Melbourne Heart have us convinced as well. The acquisition of guys like Simon Colosimo and Michael Beauchamp in defence, Jossip Skoko in midfield and John Aloisi up front all points to a win. However, it’s the big occasion and we’ve seen other Melbourne sides fail at this stage before.

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Gordon D'Mello

Gordon is a Journalism student at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney who has a huge passion in the field of sports writing and sport itself. Here he is a writer, senior editor and is also a co-founder of Injury Time.