R19 away v Syd FC (Leichhardt)

[Wombat]

Aspro and Sam were both indeed excellent.

 

[Forum Phoenix]

All 3 Fox Sports pundits said it was no penalty, so why no VAR review? If Ned, Kossie and Archie thought it wasn’t a pen, it must have been as soft as it seemed.....

Clear and obvious error... absolute farce.

You don’t try to remove human error to then insert subjective judgement on when to apply it or you just reintroduce human f**king error again.

How hard is it to say all penalties are reviewed, just mental.

 

[Wombat]

The ref couldnt wait to award it. FFA STOOGE.

 

[Scotty]

Graham and Aspro made the difference. Without them, we would have been thumped. Have to give Kennedy a mention, he kept us in it too.

Our distribution going forward was terrible. It was back to lump it up the park to Matty and play poor through balls. In both cases, we turned it over and spent most of the match defending.

It was a shame that grub Brosque took a dive. We didn't necessarily deserve to win, but we would have earnt it, given our capitulations from previous matches.

 

[turbo]

Our distribution going forward was terrible. It was back to lump it up the park to Matty and play poor through balls. In both cases, we turned it over and spent most of the match defending.

There were many times where Matty headed the ball on despite being the furthest player forward. I’m not sure what we expected from that but it didn’t work for obvious reasons.

 

[turbo]

This one didn’t age so well for them

 

[marinermick]

That game highlighted the massive difference between competent and incompetent goalkeeping.

Kennedy has an A-league standard game and we grab a point.

 

[Ancient Mariner]

As Scotty said our distribution going forward was non existent, and our defending was not much better.

I beg to differ with others here who say we defended well. We did not. We scrambled well in defence individually and relied on Kennedy to pull off some good saves. Sydney blew enough chances that they could have won the game 5-1.

Giving up the midfield and packing the box does not equate to good defending.

We got lucky and grabbed a point.

 

[Capn Gus Bloodbeard]

Brosque fell over easily, but Karacen had two hands on his back, definite penalty.

Fox studio is feeling sorry for us and have been making excuses for us for weeks.
I think I preferred it, last year, when they were demanding that relegation should be brought in immediately.

The hands were only up because Brosque crossed over into his path - hands weren't there to push Brosque put protecting himself from the impact

 

[Big Al]

No mention of Melling little back heel in the last two minutes. WTF

Maybe everyone was busy taking their drink.

 

[Ancient Mariner]

No mention of Melling little back heel in the last two minutes. WTF

Maybe everyone was busy taking their drink.

The coaching staff saw it and did not seem overly impressed.

 

[Scotty]

No mention of Melling little back heel in the last two minutes. WTF

Maybe everyone was busy taking their drink.

The Melling Drinking Game* - in stores soon!

*Drink responsibly

 

[Elite]

No mention of Melling little back heel in the last two minutes. WTF

Hahaha I forgot about that. Gave me a good chuckle this morning - thanks for the reminder. What an absolute brain snap!

 

[Tevor]

As Scotty said our distribution going forward was non existent, and our defending was not much better.

I beg to differ with others here who say we defended well. We did not. We scrambled well in defence individually and relied on Kennedy to pull off some good saves. Sydney blew enough chances that they could have won the game 5-1.

Giving up the midfield and packing the box does not equate to good defending.

We got lucky and grabbed a point.

100% Ancient, we got lucky.

MV and SFC both helped by very soft penalties to claim draws in this round. Nothing ever changes and probably never will.

 

[LFCMariners]

f**king disgraceful penalty that a clearly biased ref would not dream of giving as a foul in open play......suddenly a fly lands on his shoulder and forces him to the ground.......and the most corrupt refs since Shields and Breazze points to the spot............... and the two Sydney pundits......oh i think there was contact. Absolute flogs!!

TBF it should always be remembered that Breeze was the first ref to show Sack-Whack a red card (against the Nix in '08, IIRC)

Got the light rail from Central with a mate, hopped off at Lilyfield and met with a few others at the Orange Grove hotel for pre-drinks before we walked up to the ground. Hadn't been to Leichardt in nearly 17 years, but going back there yesterday reminded me of why I love it. You're close to the action, even a 15k (or yesterday, 12k) crowd has great atmosphere and the way the whole ground is tucked away at the end of the street and surrounded by a grove of trees gives the whole place that old-school charm. I'd rather SFC play there as opposed to Kogarah during the interim period if I were a Smurf, and geographically it's closer to their heartland...

As for the game itself- the CCM goal was a surprise to us all I'm sure, it came out of nowhere. SFC had been dominating possession up to that point. They had so many chances at goal and couldn't capitalise, we were quite lucky with the post deflection and then Ninko hoofing it over straight after.

I normally critiscise him but big props to BK yesterday between the sticks- he saved our arse so many times, especially right on the 90th minute with that full body block on shot. If his saving was of that standard 3 weeks out of 4, CCM would have much better g/d and more points on the ladder, end of.

Brosque could've stayed on his feet instead of going down in the box, but he was no Ashley Young. I wonder again how hastily that penalty would've been blown if it'd been one of our guys down the other end though?

I don't see much point complaining about the Brosque penalty because in the end a draw was a deserved result, based on the game alone. CCM had little in the way of attack and really should've pushed for the 2nd or even 3rd goal to seal up the game. And that time-wasting right at the end instead of taking the chance at grabbing a late, late winner. WTF? Dumb. SFC looked the better side but couldn't get it together with the last touch that would've landed them goals- and like I said, BK had one of his best performances of the season yesterday.

Walking out in a crowd of SFC fans, they were acting like they'd been beaten. The advantage for CCM here is that an extra point means if they win 2 games from here and the Roar don't, they go ahead of the Roar on points outright. Brisbane played their big game last weekend against SFC, CCM haven't lost to them this season so facing up to them at home is a great chance to reel them in further. A win yesterday would have been amazing, but I'm happy to walk away with a point. Considering the game, it felt like a fair result.

 

[FFC Mariner]

I didnt mind holding the ball in the corner at the end. Better to keep the point away to a top side than try and attack and risk a counter.
I thought our overall game management was excellent yesterday. Proper grown up football.

 

[marinermick]

I didnt mind holding the ball in the corner at the end. Better to keep the point away to a top side than try and attack and risk a counter.
I thought our overall game management was excellent yesterday. Proper grown up football.

Agree with this. My gripe the last few months has been how poorly we slowed the game down when we needed to.

This was outstanding yesterday. From strategic fouls, to preventing quick starts by Sydney to slowing our set pieces, this was all on point.

Taking that set piece in the corner would have left us exposed in our tired defence. The gain would have been a small chance of converting the set piece.

Reward did not outweigh the risk.

 

[Antlion]

With essentially 4 new players in the squad there was no cohesion at all - like strangers playing together. If they get to know each other quickly we might be able to string some passes together in upcoming games

 

[LFCMariners]

Spotted Dan Bagala there yesterday. I yelled out "WEVENGE!" as loud as I could when he walked by, but I don't think he heard me over the crowd noise.

 

[Forum Phoenix]

There were many times where Matty headed the ball on despite being the furthest player forward. I’m not sure what we expected from that but it didn’t work for obvious reasons.

Always drives me mental when strikers do this.

In attack we’ve gone way back into our shell. Embarrassingly so at times.

Mulvey looks like he’s been focusing on defence - but now our attack has all but disappeared. Millar and Hoole are a massive part of that dysfunction, but Matty needs another actual goal scoring striker alongside him or we’re going to continue to struggle to create and score.

Lump it to Matty alleviates some pressure when he holds it up, which he does very well, but rarely conveys into a actual attack. And now Millar has become useless, we look very poor going forward again.

Though I’m glad we got a point, and our backline defended well, truth is Sydney beat themselves that game. They were fuming, should have put us to the sword and they knew it.

Personally I did not draw a lot of confidence from that performance.