Saturday, October 27, 2007

Melbourne 0 v Newcastle 2: Allsopps tales

O boy. It's starting to get hot and humid and the players are getting edgy.

Lose one game and you can blame the ref. Lose several games and its time to change your coach. And back pops the intimidator, John Kosmina. John clearly is part of the paradise club and that club has made it clear they have missed him. And all the headline news is not an uncharacteristic way for a sport to keep itself in the public interest. AFL does it all the time, one club setting itself up against another to remind the fans about this week's game. AFL are going to do it next season by deliberately setting their game calendar in competition with rugby league, see if that gets interest.

Just as long as they spell your name right. Or in the A-League's case print the right game location, day and kick-off time.

And so it was was that Sydney hit back over the Central Coast's signing of John 'world cup qualification goal TM' Aloisi. He'll leave in January they said. Well I can only see that happening if he scores a truck-load of goals and I don't think he is going too. But he should lift the league leaders to a decent attendance. And Foxtel will be pleased too.

Back to Victory v Yets. 27,000 fans and one very rough game. Adam Griffiths scored but the FFA may care to have a look at that one. He fouled Allsopp here and up the other end of the park with the aid of Ante Covic.

Joel Griffith scored the other goal and was involved in the running, arms flailing tussel that led Steve Pantelidis to take the law into his own hands and get sent off. Newcastle's Andrew Durante was also lucky to stay on the park after pushing Allsopp down (again) in the penalty area.

It was rough and really Melbourne got a bit of a taste of their own medicine after not scoring despite 60% possession. Thompson is a real class player, and he plays fair. We are lucky to have him in the A-League. But Danny Allsopp needs to work more closely with him if Melbourne are going to stay top 4.

On the other hand, the Griffith brothers are not what the Socceroos need if we are to succeed in Asia. The refs will not stand for the way they play. And that is the challenge for the A-League. I think it should be the hot humid, low tolerance simulation ground for Asian qualification.

The return of John Kosmina, albeit to the stands for four weeks, does not send the 'we've learnt about cool heads for Asia' lesson.

1 comment:

Neil said...

Matthew Breeze had a shocker. Its time for him spend a week on the sidelines to think about his poor performance. His blatant inaction led to the unnecessary sending off of Pantelidis. As you say this was among a number of poor decisions. The decisions or lack there of by the referee wasn't the only reason that the Victory lost but it didn't help.