A League - Week 10 Review

A curtailed league programme again this weekend as Western Sydney Wanderers headed off to Morocco to take part in the World Club Cup but more of that later. The first game up was Adelaide United taking on Brisbane Roar at Coppers Stadium and the visitors upset the odds and took the spoils with a 1-0 win courtesy of Henriques seventh league goal of the season in the eighteenth minute.

The goal was another beauty from the Brazillians playbook as he cut in from the left and unleashed an unstoppable drive into the top corner from over 20 yards. United were strangely out of sorts and maybe had an eye on the inaugural FFA cup final against Perth which was coming up on the following Tuesday evening.

Argentinian playmaker Marcello Carrusca was absent for United and his creative spark was badly missed. Even saying that Adelaide should still have scored and Sergio Cirio missed a sitter in the fifty eighth minute to level matters. At least they had a chance to redeem themselves in the cup in midweek.

On the same evening Perth Glory hosted Newcastle Jets at the NIB Stadium and this one followed the form book with a 2-0 win for the table topping Glory team. On the flip side the Jets remain winless so you didn’t have to be Nostradamus to see this one coming. Perth got off to a decent start when Richard Garcia opened the scoring in the eleventh minute.

Unluckily for Newcastle a through ball meant for Danny Garcia was deflected into the path of Garcia by Jets defender Scott Neville, the Perth man showed no mercy and despatched to the net. The A Leagues favourite Irishman Andy Keogh was central to the second Glory goal when he held the ball up in time honoured centre forward fashion before finding Nebojsa Marinkovic who hammered home from the edge of the box. To make matters worse for Newcastle their Dutch skipper Kew Jaliens was rightly shown a straight red card for an ugly over the top challenge on Mitch Nichols in the eighty second minute.

Saturday gave us Wellington Phoenix against Central Coast Mariners at Eden Park, a home banker you’d feel, yet again we were proved wrong and the bookies laughed all the way to the bank as the teams played out a 1-1 draw.

The Mariners were first to trouble the scorers in the fortieth minute when a Nick Fitzgerald shot was parried into the path of Matt Simon who finished through the legs of Glen Moss in the Nix goal. Phoenix had plenty of possession and efforts but it took until the seventy sixth minute to get back on par. Roy Krishna picked up a lovely ball over the top from Michael McGlinchey to knock home for the fourth consecutive game.

The league programme was brought to a close on Saturday evening with an absolute cracker of a game between Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC who gave us a 3-3 draw in front of twenty five thousand fans at the Etihad Stadium. Archie Thompson scored a hat trick for the home team to bring his tally up to six league goals for the season and with them bring the Victory tally for the season to 24. He twice put the home team ahead before having to rescue a point for the Victorians in the seventy ninth minute. The second goal was the pick of the bunch, Kosta Barbarousis played the veteran striker in to the inside right channel and he thrashed home past Vedran Janjetovic in the visitors goal.

For Sydney Kiwi striker Shane Smeltz played a blinder scoring twice and setting up Marc Janko for the Sydney opener. His second was his best as he turned neatly in the area to create enough room to shoot before finding the far corner with his effort.

Victory skipper Mark Milligan escaped censure from the ref for opening up Terry Antonis’ head with a trailing elbow, however the match review panel were not so lenient and he faces a three match ban. Despite providing a great evening of entertainment both teams will be disappointed to lose further ground to Perth at the top of the league.

Outside of the league we had Western Sydney Wanderers taking on Mexican champions Cruz Azul, the word farce barely did the game justice. Heavy rain fall before the game made the pitch barely playable this was topped up as more rain fell during the game reducing the playing surface to a series of puddles prohibiting anything like a decent game of football.

To add another level of comedy on top the referee put in a performance more suitable to Sunday league than supposedly the highest level of world club football. The Wanderers actually managed to open the scoring with a great strike from Italian midfielder Iacopo La Rocca that skidded along the sodden surface into the corner of the net from over 30 yards.

They were reduced to ten men but still managed to hold out until just two minutes from time when Cruz Azul were awarded a penalty which took the game to extra time. Wanderers were reduced to just nine men when skipper Nikolai Topper Stanley was dismissed with a second yellow card. It didn’t seem to matter to the ref that he hadn’t been involved or was even adjacent to the challenge that brought his first booking. 

The Mexicans took control and scored a further two goals to face Spanish giants Real Madrid  in the semi-finals. Wanderers went in to the fifth place play off against Algerian champions ES Setif and drew 2-2, for reasons best known to the tournament organisers and possibly out of pity for the watching public no extra time was played and the game went straight to penalties. ES Setif prevailed and so the season of woe continues for Wanderers as they came up short yet again.

The FFA cup final took place on Tuesday evening when Adelaide United played host to Perth Glory and the home team took the cup with a 1-0 win. Josh Risden was dismissed for Perth in the fifty eighth minute and the hosts took full advantage when Sergio Cirio decided the game in the sixty seventh minute to give Adelaide the first silverware of the season.

What have we learned?          

Western Sydney Wanderers may have ridden their luck to win the Asian Champions League but by god their luck has changed since.

This week’s fixtures

Newcastle Jets v Adelaide United

Melbourne City v Melbourne Victory

Perth Glory v Central Coast Mariners

Sydney FC v Wellington Phoenix