A good hit out; much improved from last week. Rose continued at right back, young Neill on the left; Vernes was on the bench, Mané was not. Monty and Hutch were in midfield, Anderson and Bosnar the centre backs, no sign of the trialist. Brisbane was without the influential Broich and McKay, and has to live without Berisha, but considering they are much deeper into their pre season than the Mariners I think Phil Moss will be quite satisfied.
Defensively we were pretty solid, only individual errors, notably a horrible double poor pass by Bosnar gave us cause for alarm. We were very comfortable until caught napping by Henrique, late on. It was Brisbane’s only real shot of the game, Reddy was furious, but that may have been simply because we had a NYL defender, Nick Petrillo, on the field.
Brisbane looked ominous early with a smothering press but the Mariners settled quickly and began to play a decent game of their own. On fifteen minutes, Cernak, who played much better than I expected, had a terrific snap volley just over. Duke missed a great chance when clear from a long ball and the Mariners, although the raids were sporadic looked the more likely to score. One super quick long passing move on the break found Duke out wide but he couldn’t quite get the cross in. In the closing minutes of the half an excellent long ball from Reddy found Duke on the right, the ball came to Cernak who created enough confusion in the Roar defence for Fitzgerald, who had replaced the injured Kim, to score.
All the Mariners subs got a game, except the keeper, and we looked untroubled until Henrique equalised. The only other threat was a sharp shot from Petratos which Reddy plucked as if taking a six-pack from the top shelf. Some of the approach work was quite good, albeit patchy. A fine move down the right – most of our good work was on the right hand side – had Cernak putting in an excellent cross although Brisbane cleared.
It was of course, a pre season game; there were plenty of errors, poor decisions and misplaced passes but the team work and effort has certainly gone up a couple of notches. Cernak was lively and did well, but, Vernes, who replaced him in the second half made little impact. Reddy has clearly worked on his foot work while Duke has not. Montgomery was our best; his tandem with Hutch gave us a decent platform. I expected more from Caceres when he came on for Hutch. Young Michael Neill had a decent shift without banging down the door for a first team A League place. Kim sadly, predictably, seemed to fall over for no reason and limped off after about half an hour; we were better with Fitzgerald.
