In A-League of Its Own- Edition 15

Tom’s weekly outlook on the A-League

In another week of A-League action, we saw a goal fest of a round. Not one game had less than 2 goals, with two having two, two having three and one having five. It has been a good trend this season, which has hopefully improved the reputation of Australian football and the A-League. Unfortunately, the goals aren’t bringing as many new faces to grounds as FFA would like.

Game week 13 got underway at Etihad, where an expectant lot of Adelaide fans travelled to face the inconsistent Victory. A well-known fact coming into the game, was that Melbourne had defeated Adelaide the last 9 times the two giants had met, not including that 6-0 romp of United in the 2007 Grand Final. Adelaide came into the game in a position they hadn’t been in before any of those meetings, and that was top of the table. Most fans were still settling in and finding their seats, when Kevin Muscat gave away a needless free-kick in a dangerous position out wide on the left. The ball was swung in and veteran Iain Fyfe nodded home with just 57 seconds on the clock. It put the whole stadium into a state of shock, with all of the 16,000 fans staggered that the Reds had got on the board early. One thing came from it that worked into Victory’s favour though; they had to attack until they got in front. Attack they did, and for the next 90 minutes Melbourne dominated Adelaide to the point where they made the Reds look amateurish. Robbie Kruse scored the second goal of the game 21 minutes in, with a scorcher from 20 yards. The two teams went in at half-time level on the scoreboard, but Melbourne were well on top of United. Carlos Hernandez scored what ended up being the winning goal in the 68^th minute, after Robbie Kruse cut the ball back expertly to the penalty path of Hernandez, whose unmarked run and kick was great for the Victory morale. The game ended 2-1, and Melbourne have now a perfect 10 over Adelaide.

Of the fans that were at both of the games at Saturday’s double-header at SFS, they saw two different but entertaining games. The first was Sydney getting just a point out of a winnable game with Brisbane Roar. Luke DeVere put the visitors in front 7 minutes in, but Alex Brosque leveled 34 minutes in to make the final score 1-1.

The second game was amazing. Central Coast absolutely demolished a very out of sorts Perth. 5-0 was the end result, and even though the first half only provided one goal, it was arguably an even more dominant performance. The scorers were: Griffiths ’37, Simon ’59, Kwasnik ’78, Smith ’86, Sekulovski (own goal) ’90. The first four were a combination of awful defending and good interplay, but the own goal just capped off a horrid night for the Glory.

Newcastle hosted Melbourne Heart at Port Macquarie on Sunday, and the few fans who did turn up, saw an unfortunate win to Heart. Nick Kalmar opened the scoring for the visitors with a neat overhead kick 8 minutes after half-time. Skoko headed back a ball in to Kalmar, who looked unsure what to do, but then executed the kick to perfection, and got the goal. Gerald Sibon slotted a penalty in the fourth minute of injury time to seal the win.

North Queensland Fury played host to Gold Coast on Sunday evening, at Dairy Farmers Stadium. Adam Traore drew first blood for the visitors just 11 minutes in, but that was cancelled out by half-time, when Mark Hughes tapped in pretty much on the half-time whistle. Gold Coast Defender Dino Djulibic admitted after the game that his winning goal in the 84^th minute was even a complete surprise to him, but mentioned that it was a perfectly done training ground move. The final score was 2-1 to Gold Coast. These are two teams who have claims for a spot in the finals and I think they might be fighting out that 6^th and last place for a game in the finals series right to the end of the season.

Two midweek games were played overnight, Wellington hosted Brisbane, and Perth hosted Heart. I will report on them as a comment below my article.