The Ballymore monkey was finally thrown off the backs of the Brisbane Strikers tonight when the boys in yellow toughed out a tense encounter with South Melbourne to emerge 2-1 winners and record their first home win of the season.

The relief among the players and their diehard supporters as the full time whistle was blown was visible and almost touchable. As defender Shane Stefanutto, always one of the first players to walk over to the fans at the touchline after the game, said later "It wasn’t one of our better performances". But it was a winning performance and, when viewed in the context of previous games lost after playing champagne football, it will perhaps be seen by the team and supporters as a piece of poetic justice that they won tonight despite being on the back foot for long periods of the game.

And further poignant poetry was added by the fact that one of the goalscorers for the Strikers was Kris Trajanovski, who was feted before the match for his achievement in playing his 300th NSL match the week before against Newcastle United.

The match began in a cautious vein, with South Melbourne making most of the play and Zeljko Susa and Fausto De Amicis threatening repeatedly down the left. De Amicis was put into the clear on a number of occasions by diagonal balls played in behind the Strikers defence, (which dispensed for the evening with the recent experiment of using Stuart McLaren as a sweeper), but the Strikers’ central pairing of Laybutt and McKain dealt well with any high balls into the middle.

Perversely, though, South’s best moment of the half was created from the opposite flank when Peter Buljan, operating wide on the right, skinned Steve Laybutt with a quick turn and zeroed in towards Strikers’ goalkeeper Jason Kearton’s near post. With the middle of the Strikers’ penalty area looking like the setting for the charge of the light brigade as attackers and defenders converged upon it waiting for the seemingly inevitable cut-back from Buljan, the crafty forward instead arrowed a shot in at the near post where Kearton was aware enough to spread himself to make a fine save.

However, the breakthrough came at the other end in the tenth minute when a high ball was hoisted into the South Melbourne penalty area. Anthony Roche, using his height to good advantage, leapt to get a headed flick-on over the top of a South Melbourne defence caught square, and the ball fell into an inviting part of the penalty area. Trajanovski reacted quickest and beat the advancing South Melbourne goalkeeper, Eugene Galekovic, to the ball to knock it over and past him into the net for the lead.

Strikers supporters, unused to watching their team go ahead this season, reacted with predictable glee and busily occupied themselves for some considerable time in baiting the unfortunate Galekovic, who was fondly remembered for a howling error he made a two years ago when playing for Eastern Pride.

But in truth the South Melbourne custodian had little to do for the rest of the half except ignore the baiting, as the home side concentrated on keeping its one goal advantage by getting behind a ball that was being stroked around with unerring accuracy by a determined and skillful South Melbourne outfit.

However, for all their territorial dominance, South Melbourne created few real headaches for Kearton. Buljan, who had a loan spell with Brisbane over a season ago, was looking by far the visitors’ most dangerous player, time and again beating Laybutt with deft twists and turns and setting up dangerous situations which were generally squandered by inaccurate shooting or dealt with by desperate clearances.

The Strikers reached the half time break with their lead intact but with supporters getting an uncomfortable feeling that the sheer glut of possession to South Melbourne would surely result in a goal to the visitors before much time passed in the second stanza. It duly arrived in the fifty-third minute when, shortly after a rare Strikers attack, Peter Buljan squeezed past two Brisbane defenders and got into the box for the umpteenth time. This time he opted for the square ball which cut out Kearton and found Vaughan Coveny racing in to put away a simple tap-in for the equalizer.

The goal had the effect of galvanizing the home side, which began to play with more urgency. Although South Melbourne continued to press and create opportunities over the next fifteen minutes or so, gradually a better shape and structure began to creep into the Strikers’ play as players such as Laybutt, Webber and Stefanutto got forward and began to turn a tide which had been flowing inexorably towards them. About mid-way through the half, Kosmina brought on Lawrence Drake for Trajanovski, who had toiled manfully up front with Roche after scoring his goal, but without getting much service.

It proved to be an influential substitution, though perhaps not in the way either the player or his coach might have imagined. In the eighty-first minute Drake found himself on the end of a sweeping attack by the home side and attempted to replicate his effort of the previous week against Newcastle, when he managed to smash home a right-footed volley from a position on the right. This time, Drake was in a position left of the upright and attempted to volley a shot slightly on the turn. However, on this occasion his timing was out and the ball went almost straight up in the air. But Drake, showing that little bit of predatory instinct that often seems to characterise his play, realised the ball wasn’t going straight out over the byline and reacted quicker than the South Melbourne defender who was marking him to get to the ball and volley it, this time with his left foot, back across goal. Galekovic got a touch to the ball, but it fell towards the penalty spot where Strikers skipper, Stuart McLaren, who had run from a deep position, had managed to position himself.

McLaren, to his great credit, steadied himself as the ball came down, held his nerve and hit a low right footed volley past the diving Galekovic and into the corner of the net to restore the Strikers’ lead. This was McLaren’s first goal for a considerable period of time, and the big man was not about to let it pass without celebrating in style, racing towards the main grandstand with arms pumping to dance a jig surrounded by delirious team-mates who knew they were getting awfully close to registering their first home points of the season.

It was now all hands to the pumps for the Strikers over the remaining nine minutes as South Melbourne threw everything they had at the home side. There were a few anxious moments for the home team, but perhaps the best chance came their way when, after working a short corner to soak up time, Peter Grierson surprised two defenders by squirming past them and into the box, hugging the byline. Like Buljan in the first half, however, Grierson shunned the cut-back and went for the near post shot, which was well blocked and put out for another corner.

Soon after, referee Mark Shield, who is owed an honourable mention for being almost invisible during the ninety minutes, blew the full-time whistle to the undiluted joy of what surely must have been the smallest home crowd ever to witness a Brisbane Strikers match.

 Nonetheless, it was a noisy crowd and its size mattered not a jot at this point in time to anyone wearing Strikers colours. For the next ten minutes or so, Ballymore was a happy place as some of the miseries of the past two months were forgotten.

Maybe it wasn’t a performance to be rated anywhere near the best the home team has produced lately. But perhaps Trajanovski was on to something when he was quoted in the Strikers’ match program saying "Sometimes you’ve got to grind out results. You can play all the good football you want, but it’s not much fun when you lose. Sometimes, I’d rather play rubbish and win games".

It wasn’t exactly rubbish, but the fun had returned!

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