One of Australian football's most experienced goalkeepers, Adam Federici has spent his career directing his teammates from the back.
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So the South Coast talent is fairly confident little will change now that he's been named captain of the Macarthur Bulls for the upcoming A-League season.
Federici is the natural successor to inaugural skipper Mark Milligan, the goalkeeper having plied his trade in England before returning to Australia last summer.
The 36-year-old has held leadership roles throughout his career and he's looking forward to leading Macarthur this season.
"I've always been in some sort of leadership role at every club I've been at," Federici said. "In the dressing room I'm pretty vocal, especially in my later years. I have that experience and I love helping the younger players.
"Nothing really changes for me in those terms, it's still a very similar role. Millsy not being here is probably the only thing that has changed.
"With goalkeeping in general, it's a position where you take on mass responsibility. During the game, you're the one that sees everything and off the pitch you need to be vocal anyway."
Macarthur have experienced a disrupted preparation for the A-League season.
The Bulls have been particularly hard hit by tightened coronavirus restrictions in local government areas of concern.
That has seen some training sessions cancelled, while some players have been absent for others.
With restrictions easing and an A-League start date of November 19 announced last week, Federici said the certainty makes it easier to prepare for their round-one clash with Wellington.
"It's been hard. It's not been easy, but it is what it is and there's not much we can do. We've trained when we could and haven't when we couldn't.
"We made the best of every session, that's all we can do. When we're allowed to train, we train and we do it to the best of our abilities.
"There's no use being a fortune teller and trying to predict the future, so each and every session is important. It improves training a little bit because we know it needs to be spot on."
The Bulls produced an impressive showing in their first season in the competition to reach the semi-final.
That has expectations high this summer, with many predicting the team will build on last year's performance.
Federici shares those high expectations, however he knows year two will prove a much tougher assignment.
"The second season is always going to be that little bit harder because expectations change.
"People suss you out pretty quickly. Last season was a bit of a benefit for us with not everyone knowing how you're going to play and how you're going to approach the game.
"This season everyone knows what they're going to get from us, the style of football we're going to play.
"We had expectations last year of where we wanted to finish. That won't change this season, we'll have our own expectations of what we want want to achieve in-house. We'll be looking to have a good season."
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