Dundee United could be looking for a favour from the Australian Football Federation in a bid to have on-loan Newcastle defender Curtis Good available for their Scottish Cup Final date with St Johnstone on May 17.
The 21-year-old has just returned to Tannadice after injuring his hip last month while on international duty for the Socceroos against Ecuador.
He did enough in that game to earn plaudits from national boss Ange Postecoglou and if Good can regain match fitness, he could be handed a call-up to a 30-man Australian squad that will train on the country’s Central Coast from May 16-22 in preparation for the World Cup in Brazil.
Those dates obviously overlap the showpiece Scottish occasion at Celtic Park and United assistant boss Simon Donnelly admitted the club might seek the player’s temporary release.
He said: “We’ll have to speak to the Australians about Curtis.
“The cup final is a massive game for us so we’d maybe have to ask them a favour if it comes to that. Curtis did a bit with the physio at the end of last week so he’ll be back in with the boys now.
“Newcastle were happy with his fitness so we’ll see how he gets on. Curtis slotted in and did very well after coming here he looked like he’d been with us all season.
“I don’t know if he’ll be ready for Saturday. He’s missed a few weeks so we won’t rush him. But we’ll see how he gets on.”
United could be forgiven for hoping that Good comes back sooner rather than later with Donnelly admitting the management team were unhappy with the standard of defending during the disappointing defeat against cup final opponents St Johnstone at McDiarmid Park.
He said: “We had a lot of chances and because the game wasn’t as fluent as we wanted it to be we came away thinking it was worse than it was. But looking back at it, we had a lot of opportunities so we can take some pluses.
“The goals we lost were poor and we’ll have to work at it. The good thing is we have other games and we can get it out of our system.
“Defensively we need to do better. We were not happy with the defending on Saturday and nobody got pass marks. We always fancy ourselves to score more than the opposition but we need to defend better.”
The loss in Perth meant that United’s dream of overhauling Motherwell and Aberdeen became more unlikely.
However, Donnelly insists that there is still plenty to play for in the league.
He said: “We’re still chasing the teams above us. I said before last weekend we’d need to win all five, now we need to win all four.
“We’ve given ourselves a massive task but it’s still something we’re fighting for. We will be playing the teams around us and everyone will take points off each other.
“So a lot can still happen. We have Motherwell and Aberdeen at home so we need to go out and win our games.
“We want to finish as high up the league as possible but to do that we’ll need to go on a run. This group of players have shown they’re capable of doing that because they’ve done it already this season.
“We want to finish the season strongly and go into the Scottish Cup final in good form. A lot was made of it being a cup rehearsal but there are four games still to play before that.
“We need to put the final out of our heads and focus on the league matches. As coaches that’s our job and I don’t think Saturday’s performance was the lads having an eye on the final.
“They know there are four games to go and they have a chance to stake their claim for the final. We fell away after the split last season but that won’t be the case this year.”