Bozza's debut will see much of the attention focused on the Mariners but Kosmina is more concerned with his own camp.

Last Saturday his side scored a scrappy 2-1 win over the Queensland Roar in the opening round of the Pre-Season Cup, and with the start of the season-proper only weeks away, the Sydney coach is looking for a much improved performance from his players.

He said: “We were fairly un-cohesive against Queensland, for reasons I’m not sure, because we’d done alright in the trial games we’d had previously and we’d actually trained really well that week.

“Maybe it was first game nerves, I don’t know, but we’ve had a good talk about how we went about things and what we need to do to change.”

Sydney have a good record against the Mariners, having won seven of the thirteen clashes between the teams, compared to the Central Coast’s four.

Kosmina isn’t reading anything into that however, and knows his side will have to be on its game.

He said: "They play a high tempo, high intensity game and they’re going to work hard, it’s one of their trademarks and we need to be able to match that otherwise we won’t be coming out with the result we want.”

Overshadowing the game itself is the return of former Socceroo goal-keeper, Mark Bosnich, who’ll stand between the Central Coast sticks after five years in the football wilderness.

Kosmina said: “Oh look, I hope it has an impact on the crowd if nothing else. Bozza’s got a presence in a goal mouth so it’ll be interesting to see how our blokes react to that.”

And the Sydney mentor is hoping his players will react positively, looking to put plenty past the Coast custodian.

“We’re in a position where we want to get a result, we want to be successful, every trophy counts.”