Mariners V Glory PSC Semi

[offtheball]

A disappointing night on the scoreboard.

I thought the intensity was poor till we were down 2-1.

Can't believe the chances we had yet came away with only 2 goals, hitting woodwork, sniper getting Hutch.

Ref went against us all night in 50/ 50 calls.

Mrdja's strike was awesome.

Pondeljak should start. Heff injected plenty of enthusiasm and looked dangerous.

Backs have some work to do.

Crowd disappointing if we have 4000 members.

[bobandbill]

Bloody unlucky. We had two woodworks, and Hutch should have scored... hope he is alright with his injury but.

With Mrdja doing freekicks, we can expect a few goals from dead ball chances.
Agree that Tommy P should start, and our defence looked shaky tonight.

Liked the call about the ref "he's worse than Mark Shield!' - didn't think that call was far off - he had a shocker, and was rather biased. One linesman called every 'offside' possible against us for the first half, and then didn't do call much (if any) offsides against Perth for the second half....

We need to play with more intensity throughtout the whole game, not when we are behind, something which I noticed has happened all too often in previous games. Why not play as we did in getting our 2nd goal?

[gull]

The whole team seemed a bit flat to me. Both teams very bunched in midfield.

Great Mrdja free kick, but I don't think we deserved to win the match.

Hopefully we're saving it all for Sydney in the opening game!

[mortez]

Boogard and Jedinak look to slow and cumbersome against athletic oposition. They both have great strenght but lack speed.

[offtheball]

Boogard was certainly done for pace a couple of times.

[yellowcake]

The first two Pre-Season Cup winners have gone on to lose the Grand Final ... at least we've got that monkey off our back already




Also ... first two Pre-Season Cup runners-up haven't even made the A-League semis (cross that off too)

[omni]

Yea I don't think it's MOTM tonight it's more least bad player, absolute shocker tonight!

Defence was well and truely caught out most of the night.

[yellowcake]

Seriously, a bit disappointed in the result but I thought with a bit of fine tuning we've got a brilliant squad.

Overall, I was happy with the night thus:

- I thought we played attractive football, period.
- The long awaited Mrdja goal at Bluetongue (well, since before it was Bluetongue! What?... 2 years). And what a screamer, even if he had to practice it at the previous free-kick).
- The new guy / star striker opening his account (even if Sasho was a MILE off-side, who said all the calls went Perth's way?) Still, made up for some of the other calls, particularly in the first-half.
- Heff ... was BACK
- A bunch of chances (Nik x2, Gumps, Heff, Hutch one-on-one ... is he the new Kwassy?) that more deserved to goals than Glory's three, but that's football
- Loved the last corner when even Danny came up. Flashback to added time in the 2005/06 GF.

Bring on A-League V.3 (but see you next week)



Downsides tonight:

- Why is the service at KFC Wyoming so F%#KING slow?

[Nah.]

It's wyoming. at least you're not at hungry jacks, they're absolute shite.

We wasted too much time playing with the ball in the air. Dissappointed with our loss, although perths first goal was quite good, i'll give them that.

Did anyone else notice the huge amount of bogans present? At one point the kid in front of me was yelling 'Hey Ref! Just becuase you live in a cardboard box doesnt mean you have to make such bad decisions!'

Not too impressed with the crowd turnout either. less than 6000. Jeez.

[offtheball]

Most frustrating thing for me for a while has been back passing to Danny who thumps it over the sideline or puts a 50/50 ball in the air on half way. It is an inane tactic.

Over the past two years he has not improved in kicking a moving ball, so I presume he is not practising the skill so further presume it is not a McKinna tactic. So why the hell does it keep happening?

[roylaw]

Thank God it was pre season. No width, no invention. Mrdja and Petrovski got no service all night. Did Kwasnik play? Gumprecht has been found out by the opposition and runs predictable angles. Hutchinson looked tidy, Osman ok, Boogard is very slow but improved markedly. Wilkinson efficient but needs to step up and stamp his personailty on the game. Jedinak started ok but faded. and that had to be the worst I have ever seen Vukovic play and he wasn't at fault with the goals! No sign at all that we have improved as a footballing side, at this rate we will be left behind by others. Playing pretty passing football without any end product will get us nowhere. We'll finish sixth if we are lucky. I will, of course, be back next week

[greenpoleffc]

Agreed - Hungry Jacks at Wyoming provides the worst service of anywhere I can think of.

As to the game, we treated it as a friendly, Perth treated it as a semi. Credit to them, they were organised and I think they will prove v hard to beat this season.

As for us.............

Danny's kicking was woeful

Boogs - another assured performance. V calm, looks for the pass rather than the hoof

Nik - Awesome workrate, wonderful 2st touch

Saso - I will reserve comment, not the hardest worker is he?

Hutch - Injury didnt look good, he was is a lot of pain when he came off

[orangeman]

Bummer result, now we have to go to Perth if we win.....
Then again if we lose we play you guys down there.
Anyway peckers up...its only pre-season shit...but a Roar v Mariners final would have been awesome and a close game.

[jim540]

Average performance till Tommy and Heff came on , Gumps didn't get enough ball & service from others around him so he can feed the forwards, defense it's not good enough and if we defend like that we will be on a hiding to non every game.Up front sometimes i think there's to many individuals and they want to do it on there own and that doesn't win games. Hope we improve and not just against Sydney but all the other A-League teams. There where positives in the game last night but came in short stints.

[thesandman]

Mixed thoughts on the match.

Downers
- last season, especially at the start, what REALLY killed us was
1)Unorganised and ineffective defence
2)Not capitalising on our chances.

What killed us last night? Exactly the same things. A little worrying....
We also seemed to play a lot of 'kick and pray'. We had some moments of really good football, particularly in attack, but for the most part we let Perth control the ball all over the pitch - particularly in midfield. Mostly everybody looked a bit rusty, at best. But hey, that's what preseason's for!
Hutcho I thought was particularly disappointing. Last season his game was very poor, just seemed to lack confidence. Last night he still didn't do much - I had high hopes for him returning to form. But, like everybody else, maybe it's still too early.
Positives
-we DID create a lot of chances
-the chances that nearly were seem to indicate that once our team gets more used to each other and their positions - particularly our striking duo - that we're going to be in much better shape. IF Mrdja and Sasho learn to work together - which I think (hope) they will - they're going to be lethal.
-Heff was a bit rusty, but he certainly showed glimpses of his attitude which is the one we've all been wanting him for. I'm quite excited at the prospect of seeing him hit form in the squad

I thought that the team definitely lifted when Tommy came on.

We have some brilliant talent - but I think this season the only way for them to shine is, as jim said, to not play as individual talent but play together as a well oiled machine. That will in turn allow for individual brilliance and many more chances.

[dibo (pron. "DIB-OH")]

i think last night told us more about perth than the mariners to be honest. they moved the ball around well, they used their new signings well, they had a ping when they could.

dragiceviv and rustavskaya look very handy indeed, and even leo bertos made a threat because he knew where to work. their back line is organised and massive. tarka was a rock.

they're a very handy team, and should be ignored at your peril.

but i'm liking the look of this comp, so many good teams, so many close contests. the standard has gone up again. bring on the regular season.

[mustapha_beer]

This was a very frustrating result, because even though we didn't play that well, we still could easily have won. Hit the woodwork twice, Hutch had 2 open goals (more or less) and Mrdja had another freekick hit the side-netting.

Perth did look quite handy up-front, and our defence did look a bit shaky, but even so......damn! we could still have snuck that one.

If you look at the goals conceded, at least 2 of them were due to crosses not being cleared. In fact, that happened on other occasions too. The 2nd one was a deflected free kick, and I guess there's not too much you can do about that, apart from not giving away the free kick in the first place. But the others were self-inflicted, and I hope the defence learns to be a bit more brutal in snuffing out the opposition.

[trip]

yeah but if those close balls did go in would you feel any better? If anything Perth would have been ripped off because they played wonderfully. We looked extreemly tired probably due to a vigerious traning schedual and were beaten in pace all over the field. Perth are definatly a team we dont want to underestimate in v3.
There were a few positives tho, Heaps more chances were taken, may not have gorn in but at least it is an improvement on last yeah where no one even took a chance, attempts by Gumpy, Hutch, sash o and Nik m were at least attempts. The only real problem i have is Danny, here is a man who is traning for the young soccer roos, suppose to be National talent playing worse then trotty against Adelaid. I can only conclude two things either he really didnt want to injure himself and was playing very carefully or he really doesnt want to go to IRAQ in fear of getting shot.
Put that with the worst ref'ing since Mark Shield lol and it was a dissapointing game but oh well lads ON TO VERSION 3. see you all next week.

[shelleybeach]

didn't see the game so you're comments are really interesting, the only thing i can add is go red rooster

[shelleybeach]

ps my wife is criticising my spelling but i've had quite a few today - can i add don't hurry to get married if you're young