Melbourne wary of Snakes lurking

Melbourne United doesn't return from the mid-season break until they face Cairns on Sunday, and star wing Chris Goulding says his side is looking to utilise that to their advantage.

Sunday’s meeting will be the first time Cairns and Melbourne have clashed in NBL24, but the Taipans have to negotiate a meeting with state rivals Brisbane on Friday, prior to their matchup with the ladder leaders.

Cairns currently has a run of nine straight wins against the Bullets, and Goulding says United will heavily scout Friday’s game ahead of the meeting on Sunday.

“A lot of us will be watching tonight,” Goulding said.

“They’re young, athletic, they like to play up tempo, switch on defence and make life difficult for other teams.

“We’ll have a close watch of them tonight, we’ll come back in tomorrow and really pick apart where we think our advantages are and have a good game plan going into Sunday.”

“We get to see what kind of adjustments they made in the FIBA window. They’ve had a couple of injuries as well, so I think (Bobi) Klintman will be back, and see their full roster and how they put it together,” Melbourne head coach Dean Vickerman added.

“They’ve lost some close games this year, they’ve been in every contest and they create some pretty unique challenges with their length and size they put on the floor.”

United look set to take a fully-fit roster into the game for just the second time this season, following the impending return of star guard pair Matthew Dellavedova and Ian Clark.

The only time United has managed to roll out a full-strength roster this season was in their Round 6 overtime loss to Perth, where an accidental collision between Luke Travers and Ariel Hukporti forced Travers from the contest with concussion, before Clark suffered a calf injury later in the game.

Goulding says implementing the side’s first-choice rotation with everyone fit will be a “process”.

“That’s going to be a process as guys come back into the lineup and we figure out who plays where and who plays more minutes, less minutes,” he said.

“As we’ve said all along guys have done a great job of stepping up when they need to and guys have been ready when they come back to come in and impact.

“[We’re] making sure everyone’s ready to roll, and just keeping that hunger.

“Yeah, we’re on top of the ladder, but we haven’t done anything. There are teams we haven’t played yet, so we need to be as hungry as we were 11, 12, 13, 14 games ago, before the pre-season started.”

Melbourne will face Cairns on Sunday at 2pm AEDT, live and free on ESPN via Kayo Freebies, 10 Peach and 10 Play.