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Strikers Scrape Home In A Nail-Biter
The Brisbane Strikers made it three wins from three matches last night as a late winning goal from Jamie Lowndes settled a heart-stopping encounter with the Rochedale Rovers at Underwood Park.
The Strikers ran out 3-2 victors after twice being behind in a thoroughly enthralling game which more than lived up to its pre-match billing by Rovers coach Kieran Cooper as the game of the Premier League round.
Cooper must be scratching his head tonight about how it was that the Rovers emerged pointless from a match in which they dominated the first half and played some superb football. But the answers probably lie in wayward finishing and, perhaps, a moment of impetuosity from midfielder Kris Dodd which got him sent from the field midway through the second half.
The match was only three minutes old when the Rovers hit the lead through an excellent goal by Alex Panic. Panic collected a pass about twenty metres out, ran at the three-man Strikers defence of Matt Bell, Adam Webber and Daniel Leach and produced a deft shimmy to make room for a right footed strike as the defenders, in two minds, held off the tackle. Their hesitation was fatal, as Panic rifled a low shot into the bottom left hand corner of Antony Hall's goal without the Strikers' 'keeper making a dive.
Hall's nonplussed reaction indicated that he had either been unsighted or had expected the shot to pass wide of his upright but, no matter what the reason, the Strikers were behind on the scoreboard before they had even had the chance to settle.
Panic, in fact, spent a good deal of the first half producing exactly that in the Strikers defence, and he was very ably assisted by Nick Maas and Greg Thomas in a highly mobile and skillful three-man front-line which, at times, threatened to tear the visitors apart.
In the tenth minute, another jinking run from Panic around the edge of the area finished with a shot which went inches wide of where he planted the ball for the first goal. In fact, it was one-way traffic towards the Strikers goal for at least the first fifteen minutes of the match, as right-sided midfielder Andrew Butler linked well with Panic and Maas to give the likes of Jamie Lowndes and Daniel Leach a torrid working over down the left side of the Strikers' defence.
But it wasn't as if the Strikers weren't competing. Their tackling and running was willing, but their early attacking efforts lacked the fluency of previous weeks as they struggled to adapt to the rather sharp increase in pace and quality of this weekend's opposition.
In the twenty-third minute, though, the visitors found a way back into the game. Micheal Butters was brought down as he charged after a ball played down the right wing. From the resulting free kick, Nathan Carloss whipped a high cross into the Rovers' penalty area where the ball skimmed off the head of a Strikers forward towards the back post. There, Greg Di Losa reacted beautifully to outjump the Rovers defence and head the ball into the top corner of Mario Aparicio's goal and the Strikers were suddenly back in the contest.
Three minutes later, they were almost behind again. Hesitation on the left side of the Strikers defence allowed Thomas to jink and turn again, and fire in a shot which hit the post to Hall's left and rebounded to safety.
While that was one of several fortuitous let-offs for the Strikers, it was only a temporary reprieve. In the thirty-fifth minute the Rovers produced a goal right out of the top drawer when Steve Carter, who had been working away down the left flank with increasing influence, launched a curling high cross towards Nick Maas, about ten metres out. There appeared little danger as Maas had his back to goal and was shadowed by a Strikers defender. But Maas, not a tall player, obviously thought otherwise and produced a sensational leap and backwards header that sent the ball looping over Hall who was left speechless for the second time on the night.
It was 2-1 to the Rovers, and although the Strikers responded well and forced the Rovers to defend for much of the next ten minutes, their best effort on goal was a shot by Carloss from a half-cleared corner. Aparicio got down well to save it, and the teams headed to the half-time break with the Rovers ahead.
Within a minute of the restart the Rovers should have been ahead 3-1. Once again, the Rovers began the half at breakneck pace, and forced a corner kick which was hesitantly defended by the visitors. The ball broke invitingly for Cameron Watson, who fired in a shot which was cleared from perilously close to the line by a desperate lunge from a Strikers defender.
The ball went out for another corner, which again resulted in Watson getting a shot which was blocked in front of goal, only to fall for Carter only metres out from the goal. Carter reacted quickly but somehow managed to scoop the ball over the bar, and the Strikers supporters breathed a collective sigh of relief.
The Rovers kept banging away at the visitors' defence for the first five minutes of the half, and it was noticeable that even their sweeper, Kieran Galloway, was getting into threatening forward positions and setting up chances. One such foray resulted in Dodd firing in a good volley which Hall did well to save. Shortly afterwards, another dangerous corner kick provided a free header to Watson, which the Rovers skipper headed wide.
The chances had been piling up for the Rovers, but as any football supporter knows only too well, teams who fail to take their chances often pay a heavy penalty further down the track. After weathering the early second half storm, the Strikers began to work their way back into the game. Stewart Drinkeld, who produced a performance of limitless energy, together with Lowndes and Carloss, in particular, began to gain some ascendancy in the middle of the park and to bring Di Losa and Russell Woodruffe more into the game. And gradually, Webber, Bell and Leach began to look more comfortable at the back for the visitors. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, the tide began to turn.
As if to underline this, the Strikers earned another free kick on the right in the sixtieth minute. Carloss launched a high ball into the middle of the Rovers' penalty area where Aparicio came for it but spilled it behind him towards Di Losa, who poked it home with his left foot. It was the kind of blunder which gives goalkeepers (and their coaches) nightmares, but Di Losa reacted well as any good predator should, and it was 2-2 and 'game on'.
With the Strikers now pushing forward and perhaps smelling a little blood, the sixty-eigth minute produced a disastrous moment for the home team. Dodd, who had a few minutes earlier been yellow-carded for a foul, went two-footed into a tackle on Bell, who was in 'harmless' territory in mid-pitch. Bell was up-ended and Dodd was dismissed by the referee, to no-one's surprise, for earning his second yellow.
With a key figure from their midfield engine-room now missing, the Rovers were in trouble. A minute later, Di Losa came agonisingly close to scoring a hat-trick as he won a tackle on the edge of the Rovers penalty area, got free inside the box and got in a low shot which appeared to have "goal" written all over it, before sliding wide of Aparicio's left-hand upright.
That disappointment behind him, Di Losa was soon set free down the left by a tremendous pass from Woodruffe, before cutting inside his defender and providing a square ball to Carloss who hit a rasping drive narrowly wide of the goal. The visiting supporters were by now sensing a victory that had earlier seemed implausible and were winning the vocal contest on the sidelines as their team went in search of the winner.
The match now entered the last ten minutes, which produced enough thrills and spills to have filled an entire half as the pace of the match began to have its inevitable effect on some tired legs. The Strikers supporters were on their feet as Di Losa leapt high in the penalty area to nod down a cross from the right to Woodruffe, whose glancing volley somehow finished wide of Aparicio's left-hand upright, which by now was living a charmed life.
But no more charmed, it turned out, than Hall's. With only two minutes left, the Rovers managed what at this stage of the game was a rare foray towards the Strikers goal, earning a free kick only about twenty metres out and in a promising position right behind the "D" of the penalty area. Thomas stepped up and produced a beautifully flighted shot from the direct free kick which beat Hall, but not his left-hand upright, and rebounded back into the field of play only for Panic to blast the resulting volley high over the bar.
The supporters of both sides were now biting their nails as the clock counted down. The Strikers responded straight away, with Lowndes working down the right wing and sending a through-ball towards Di Losa in the middle. A tired Rovers defender miskicked an intended clearance and it fell for Di Losa with only Aparicio to beat. This time, the Rovers keeper produced a heroic save low to his left and it was the turn of the home team's fans to reach for the heart pills.
Those fans might have thought their team had survived its last tricky moment. But if so, they were wrong, for in injury time the Strikers forced one last corner kick which was lofted high towards the six-yard box. Aparicio hesitated and, to the midfielder's enormous credit after producing ninety minutes of lung-sapping effort on a heavy pitch, Lowndes produced one last tremendous leap to outjump his defender and nod the ball over Aparicio's own despairing leap and into the top of the Rovers' net.
It was the final killer blow on a night notable for the quality of its headed goals, and the visitors' supporters duly went ballistic as their team emerged from this tremendous contest with all three points.
One can only feel for the Rovers and their fans, as it would be tough critic who could say they deserved to lose this game. They certainly showed enough quality, cohesion and imagination to suggest they will go on to play a big part in the deciding weeks of the season.
Having said that, it would also be a churlish home team supporter who would not acknowledge that the Strikers showed wonderful grit and determination to stay in the match when they were getting outplayed, and that they did so for long enough to eventually make the better of their chances. This is a team that has, in effect, been together for only three weeks and which can only grow in cohesion. With tonight's performance, they showed a togetherness that some teams don't achieve in a whole season and Bobby Hamilton and his players deserve a great deal of credit for that.
In the final analysis, only one superb leap from Lowndes made the difference between two teams committed to playing open, attacking football. The game was a credit to everyone involved, and one that proved that anyone who reckons the Premier League does not have exciting football to offer is simply living clueless in suburbia.
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