Cooks Hill coach David Tanchevski has welcomed the challenge for his squad against Newcastle Olympic in their FFA Cup clash at Darling Street Oval on Tuesday night.
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Tanchevski, who coached NPL club Charlestown to the round of 32 in the knockout, has taken over at second-tier Cooks Hill this season.
Cooks Hill have won three of four games in Northern League One and have former NPL players such as Cody Carroll, Dan Clements, Jamie Byrnes, Lachlan Pasquale, Tom Walker and Tom Smart.
The club have strong ambitions to make the jump to NPL if and when promotion-relegation returns and Tanchevski said Olympic, who have won three of their five NPL games this year, provided a great test.
"It's always exiting, a cup game, so hopefully if things go our way, we can make a game of it," Tanchevski said.
"We've got aspirations to go to NPL so it will be good to see how we're going and how far off we are."
Making the task harder is the absence of Daniel Yaxley (suspended), Roger Dowdell (hamstring), Luke Muller and Ash Balcomb (ankle).
Also Tuesday from 7pm, Adamstown play Newcastle Suns at Connolly Park and Broadmeadow host Kotara South. At 7.30pm, Lake Macquarie welcome Westlakes and Weston host Mayfield United.
On Wednesday, Jaffas travel to Victoria Rd Complex to play Bolwarra-Lorn (7pm), Maitland host Singleton (7pm) and Valentine take on Minmi at LMRFF (8pm).
