Men’s team gives youth a

The Wellington Phoenix A-league Men team have called in some reinforcements from their academy to help get them through a potentially busy fortnight of football.

Ufuk Talay’s side is scheduled to play three games over the next eight days: Western Sydney Wanderers at home in the league tonight, Western United away in the FFA Cup round of 32 next Tuesday, and then Newcastle Jets away in the league next Friday.

If the Phoenix win their cup tie and make it through to the last 16, they will then return to Melbourne to play NPL Victoria club Avondale in another midweek fixture the following Tuesday.

Academy players Finn Surman, Jackson Manuel and Oskar van Hattum have flown over from Wellington in order to boost the numbers during the busy period and could see out the season with the first team.

‘‘We’ve got some players that haven’t played a lot of minutes so we needed some more bodies to get us through the scheduling,’’ Talay said.

‘‘If we get through the cup game there’s another midweek cup game the week after so we needed a few extra bodies and these boys have done well in the few games they have played under Greenie [Chris Greenacre] with the reserve team, so it was an opportunity to bring them over and to give us some extra numbers.’’