The Round 24 encounter, which could be crucial in deciding finals places, at Westpac Stadium coincides with New Zealand’s World Cup qualifiers against Fiji during an international window.

Phoenix coach Des Buckingham revealed he’s been informed his side could be without up to a dozen players for the fixture, leaving them to source players from their academy and reserves.

The situation left the Wellington boss reiterating predecessor Ernie Merrick’s calls for the A-League to recognise international windows or re-schedule grossly affected fixtures for the integrity of the game.

“Ideally we’d like the game to be on a different weekend, if that was a possibility,” Buckingham said.

“Not just for us, but also the other teams fighting for spots around us, whether you can say it brings the game into disrepute by having so many players away.

“I don’t know any other league in the world that would have that many international players away and still play the fixture.”

Buckingham added Wellington’s unique situation needed consideration from Football Federation Australia.

“We’re in a slightly different situation where we’re losing players to New Zealand and we’re losing a substantial amount because we’re the only professional club in the country,” he said.

“The other clubs are losing two, some none, so it doesn’t affect them as much as it possibly does us. It’s another factor to us being in this league.”

Buckingham said he’d received an indication that he’ll definitely lose seven players, including Fiji striker Roy Krishna, who’ll face New Zealand in the two fixtures.

He added: “We asked the FFA a couple of months back if we could move the fixture to a free weekend.

“As far as I’m aware, we’ve been told we can’t. We could lose up to 12 players including Roy Krishna who’ll go with Fiji.

“That’s assuming everyone else is fit and not suspended. We’ve worked out of the remaining players, the seven of them we’ve got 56 caps of professional football between them. It will be a very tough ask.

“We’ve got an academy and a reserve team here. If we need to delve into that, it’ll come from within.”