05/10/02 Wollongong Wolves |
The goal storm that has been following the Brisbane Strikers around this season struck again last night, but so did the Ballymore Blues as
the home team succumbed to its second home loss in a row - this time beaten 3-1 by the Wollongong Wolves.
Home supporters who took their seats before the game were heard wondering which Brisbane Strikers team would take the park - the one
that lost 2-1 at home to Northern Spirit in their first game of the season or the one which beat Perth Glory 4-3 away last week.
The answer was "both". The one which lost to Northern Spirit took the field in the first half, while the one which beat Perth emerged for the
second half in a performance which breathed new life into the classic old tale of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde.
The Brisbane team were simply woeful in the first half as they produced a ponderous and laboured display and were cut to ribbons by
Wollongong’s pacy and skilfull front line of Naum Sekulovski, Stuart Young and Sean Babic.
It took the Wolves only eleven minutes to get the first goal of the game when Sekulovski, whose pace and strength troubled the Strikers’
defence all night, won a battle with Steve Laybutt on the right hand side of the Strikers’ penalty area near the byline. Sekulovski managed to
turn Laybutt and get the benefit of a slightly fortuitous bobble of the ball before cutting the ball back to Stuart Young who had made a run to
the penalty spot. The retreating Brisbane defence had followed Babic to the near post, leaving Young seemingly with time to boil and drink a
cup of tea before picking his spot and guiding a shot into the right-hand corner of Jason Kearton’s net.
Three minutes later the lethargic home team produced their first serious attack in the match, with a "route one" move involving a clearance
from Kearton falling into the path of Kris Trajanovski. The Strikers’ number 10 did well to run to the edge of the box, holding off a defender,
and work the ball onto his left foot to fire a grasscutter which finished just wide of Wolves goalkeeper Andrew Crews’ left post.
But just when the Strikers were showing faint signs of getting their teeth into the half the Wolves won a corner on the left in the sixteenth
minute. Dustin Wells then struck an inswinger towards Kearton’s near post and Young, who scored from a corner in the corresponding
fixture last season, repeated the dose when he beat both Kearton and a Brisbane defender to the ball to glance a header into the far corner
of the net.
A rather sick silence fell over the disappointingly small crowd of 2,000 as thoughts of a repeat of the Northern Spirit performance began to
take hold. Three minutes later, it almost got worse for them when Babic ran straight through the heart of the Brisbane defence and was
denied only by a good save by Kearton down low to his right.
The home team appeared to have no answers. Their build up play was slow and predictable and the Wolves’ midfielders and defenders
were feasting on intercepts and mis-hit passes before releasing Sekulovski and Shane Lyons, who were causing Richie Alagich and Jon
McKain all sorts of problems down the left flank. Sekulovski, in fact, managed to embarrass McKain when, with his back to goal near the left
hand edge of the penalty area, he produced a deft overhead chip and driving run towards the six yard box before having his goalbound shot
brilliantly blocked by Kearton who had charged off his line.
Prior to this, the most promising moment the home team had managed came from a long throw by Stefanutto which somehow managed to
bounce over a swarm of players, including Crews, before falling for Trajanovski who failed to get any part of his body to it then watched as it
was bundled out over the byline for a corner.
In the thirty-seventh minute Wollongong’s first half demolition job was completed when Babic was put through wide down the right. There
was a suspicion of offside about Babic before he accepted the pass, but nothing could detract from his finishing as he rounded Kearton and
slipped the ball into the goal for a 3-0 lead.
At the more vocal, southern end of the ground the mood turned a bit ugly as the Brisbane supporters, for whom the half time whistle could
not come quick enough, began to ask some questions about the performance of their team and speculated loudly about the reception the
players would receive from coach John Kosmina at half time.
The reception mustn’t have been a pleasant one and apparently produced a casualty, for John Carbone failed to reappear for the second
half and was replaced by Matthew McKay.
It soon became apparent that Kosmina had wrought such a tranformation in the dressing rooms that Mr Hyde had, in fact, refused to come
out for the second half and had been replaced by Dr Jeckyll. The Brisbane side attacked from the kick-off with a purpose that had not been
evident at all up to then. Five minutes after the restart, McKain produced perhaps the pass of the match when he thumped an awesome
crossfielder of perhaps 50 metres straight into the path of Peter Grierson, who hooked a cross in from the left which
was scrambled away with some difficulty by the Wollongong defence.
McKain himself was the next to test the Wolves’ goal, blasting just wide from a free kick some thirty metres out after fifty minutes. Two
minutes later, Kosmina brought on tall forward Anthony Roche for his home debut in place of Trajanovski. By this time McKay, full of youthful
energy and exuberance, and Steve Laybutt, charging forward from the back, had begun doing what no Strikers player had done in the
opening stanza - running directly at the Wollongong defenders and putting them in two minds about how to deal with them. Left fullback
Shane Stefanutto, too, began making his presence felt in raids down the left wing and when Roche also began chiming in with some
well-directed headers and incisive passing the Strikers’ attack began to buzz.
After fifty-nine minutes Roche managed a shot on the turn which was saved by Crews and a minute later David Pilic shot just over from a
Laybutt lay-off. Next, Fernando Rech headed over the bar from a cross by McKay and suddenly the Wolves’ defence was creaking. Kosmina
played his last card in bringing off David Pilic and replacing him with Joshua Rose and the pacy left winger soon began adding to the
Wolves defenders’ troubles. Wolves coach Ron Corry showed his concerns by taking off striker Babic and replacing him with a midfielder in
Dean Heffernan.
But nothing much was going right for the home team despite its improved showing. Well-struck shots and headers were narrowly missing
the target, the ball seemed unwilling to fall for them in crucial areas and the bulk of the refereeing decisions were also going against them.
Brisbane’s frustrations were summed up when, in the seventy-seventh minute Fernando Rech was put through on goal by a clever pass
threaded through a crowded penalty area. The normally reliable finisher, under heavy physical pressure from a defender, failed to get a shot
away and had the ball taken off his toes by Crews, who was proving to be a stubborn barrier.
In the eighty-second minute, though, Fernando made amends and the Strikers got a well-deserved consolation goal when McKay, again
running at the heart of the Wolves’ defence, slipped a pass to Rose, who turned on the edge of the box to produce a pass which put the
Brazilian into a one-on-one with Crews. This time Fernando got in a low shot which finally beat the keeper to reduce the deficit to 3-1.
The remaining eight minutes saw the one-way traffic continue. Fernando had a shot on the turn saved by Crews and the Wolves custodian
produced his best effort of an overworked half when he somehow turned a Grierson screamer around his left post with a minute left on the
clock. Grierson was again the unlucky player when, a minute into injury time he
produced a beautifully curled and flighted direct free kick just over Crews’ crossbar.
When the final whistle blew the visitors had taken the three points, and deservedly so when the match was viewed over its entire ninety
minutes. But John Kosmina and the Brisbane Strikers might well be ruminating over the fact that football games do not begin in the
forty-sixth minute and that Ballymore has become anything but a graveyard for visiting teams.
Brisbane Strikers 1 (Fernando - 82)
Wollongong Wolves 3 (Young - 6, 16; Babic - 37)
Best for Brisbane: Steve Laybutt
Best for Wollongong: Naum Sekulovski
Match-turning moment: The kick-off for the first half
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