The 'strikerless' Brisbane Strikers made it three wins in a row last night at Perry Park and in the process notched their most impressive scoreline since Round Two of the Premier League, running out 3-1 winners over Taringa Rovers.

While the Rovers gave plenty over the first hour of the match, the Strikers finished with a flourish which firmly suggested that Bobby Hamilton's still injury-depleted squad has its best football still ahead of it this season.

With star marksman Greg Di Losa unavailable through injury and Russell Woodruffe having departed weeks ago for the Central Coast Mariners, Hamilton was left without the services of a recognised Striker. As expected, Hamilton pressed defender Adam Webber into service up front, in partnership with Matt Hornby who was getting his second start as a front man.

The Strikers were first into their stride, dominating the opening exchanges and winning several corner kicks for their troubles. Indeed, this was to prove their route to the opening goal in the seventh minute when Eli Gilfedder produced an outswinging corner kick from the left that eluded the head of the Rovers defender at the near post. No-one had picked up the run behind him by Ross Duncan who, from the unlikely position of right back, arrived just outside the six-yard box at full pace. Duncan produced an excellent improvised volley with the outside of his right foot to crash the ball low past the helpless Taringa goalkeeper Gerard Kelly.

The goal galvanised the Rovers, who had barely set foot inside the Strikers' half to that point, and the visitors had much the better of the possession over the next ten minutes without really testing the Strikers' back four of Duncan, Daniel Leach, Matt Bell and Michael Zullo. The best that the Rovers were producing was coming down their left wing, as midfielders Daniel Dreger and Brad Lacey, supported by darting runs from the back by central defender Josh Evans, worked at getting Mark Dyer and striker Andrew Imrie in behind Duncan.

But aside from a dipping effort by Imrie from a direct free kick just outside of the Strikers penalty area, which finished a metre or so over the crossbar, there was little for Rovers supporters to get excited about in the first twenty minutes.

In truth, though, since the scoring of the opening goal there had been little for Strikers supporters to get excited either. Pressed back by the Rovers, the home side's ball retention was poor and, when breaking forward, they seemed to be suffering from a lack of understanding between Webber and Hornby. Given their inexperience in partnering each other, it was perhaps to be expected that neither forward seemed to quite know where to make their off-the-ball runs. While this was going on wingers Eli Gilfedder and Michael Butters (the former in particular) appeared to be getting caught in possession while trying to hold the ball until they could 'pick' which channels their forwards were running into. And on the occasions when Webber was played into positions in the Rovers' danger zone, stopper William Tumisiime was making a very good fist of dealing with the physical presence of his muscular opponent.

The Strikers did not threaten the Taringa goal again until the twenty-seventh minute when a long ball out of defence was well shielded by Webber with his back to goal just inside the Taringa half. On this occasion, Hornby made a good supporting run down the inside right channel which Webber found with a hooked pass over his shoulder. Hornby bore down on Kelly's penalty area but was forced wide by Evans and his shot, in the end, was comfortably saved.

A few minutes later the Rovers struck their first serious shot in anger when a raid down the left saw Imrie laying off a pass across the face of the Strikers' penalty area towards Lacey. The Rovers midfielder struck the shot hard, but a despairing lunge by a Strikers defender did just enough to cause him to slice it a metre wide of Hall's left upright.

With the pace and quality of play from both teams beginning to pick up, Drinkeld went on a surging run straight up the middle of the park and dissected the Rovers' defence with a ten metre pass through to Hornby. The young forward, however, scuffed his shot with only Kelly to beat, putting it straight at the 'keeper.

Daniel Dreger responded in the thirty-fifth minute for the Rovers with a left-foot strike from all of thirty-five metres which did not miss by a lot, but in truth the Strikers went into the half-time break with their penalty area virtually unbreached and their supporters feeling generally quite relaxed and comfortable about the way the contest was heading, albeit with some concern that their team was not retaining possession well enough.

All that was to change in the next fort-five minutes, but not before the Rovers gave the Strikers a loud wake-up call or two. The first came in the fifty-second minute when Falco broke down the right wing and hit a searching cross field pass to put Reza Aysen away down the opposite wing. Aysen, who has a good turn of pace, used it to good effect, getting behind the Strikers defence and taking the ball to the by-line before cutting it back to the onrushing Imrie. With Hall covering his near post as Aysen produced the pass, Imrie had the goal at his mercy. But the nuggety striker got himself just a little tucked up as the ball perhaps arrived at a quicker pace than expected, and failed to get a firm finishing touch to it, directing it quite tamely at a grateful Hall as the Strikers got off the hook.

Not so in the sixty-first minute. Then, another Rovers attack finished with a low shot from outside the eighteen-yard box that forced Hall to dive at full stretch to his left to keep it out. On this occasion, the Strikers' custodian was able only to parry the ball back into the path of Aysen, who pounced on the scraps and tucked the ball past Hall and into the net for the equaliser.

Surprisingly, Aysen celebrated by running to the most vocal section of the home side's supporters, situated as usual at the southern end of the Bill Waddell Stand, and going on a fist-pumping run up the touchline that produced a predictably boisterous response.

Aysen's exuberant and belligerent celebrations certainly fired up the home side's supporters, and it might have done the same for some of the home side's players too, for it seemed that from this point on the home side lifted appreciably. With the Strikers beginning to impose themselves again, Gilfedder produced a cross from the left which evaded Kelly and drifted towards Webber who was unmarked at the back post. But with a goal begging, Webber failed to connect cleanly with his volley and the ball finished up behind the Taringa goal instead of in it.

Only a minute later, though, Webber atoned for his miss when he received a ball on the edge of the Rovers' penalty area with his back to goal. Under heavy attention from a couple of Rovers defenders, Hall managed to hold the ball up long enough to release it into the path of Damien Waugh, who had made a run into the box to Webber's right. Webber's pass was inch-perfect, giveing Waugh a clean run towards goal and, with Kelly advancing off his line, Waugh showed the presence of mind to delay his shot before eventually slotting it low to the 'keeper's left and into the net. It was a cool finish to a hot spell from the Strikers at a time in the game when things threatened to go either way, and as such it must have seemed priceless to Hamilton and his dugout.

Immediately after the goal, Hamilton brought off Michael Butters and substituted him with Ross Cunneen, and then a flowing move down the left wing involving Zullo, Gilfedder and Hornby finished with Waugh having another shot at goal - this time firing the ball over Kelly's crossbar from fifteen metres. A minute later Webber, who by this time was having his best spell of the match, produced a shot on the turn from the edge of the penalty area that deserved better than to finish up centimetres wide of Kelly's right-hand upright.

That was to prove Webber's last action of the match as a forward, because Hamilton next brought on Carlo Giannangello for Waugh, and used the substitution to make a positional reshuffle that saw Webber brought back to the centre of defence and Duncan pushed forward while Cunneen went to the right back position with Giannangello ahead of him in midfield.

With the match heading into its last ten minutes the home team was well on top, and in the eigthy-fourth minute they drove the point home and brought the house down with their best goal of the season so far. Zullo, deep inside his own half on the left, started a move of thirteen passes that went down the left, in to the middle, and back out the left again before a series of one-touch passes took it across the Rovers' penalty area. With the Rovers defence bemused, befuddled, bewildered and totally bamboozled, Cunneen found himself on the end of it all with time and space to measure his shot from the right-hand side of the area about ten metres out. Cunneen made no mistake, firing past Kelly into the bottom right corner to wrap the game up for his team.

It was a fine way to end a vastly-improved second half effort at ball retention, but was perhaps a bitter pill to swallow for a Rovers side that must have fancied its chances after Aysen's goal of getting at least one point from the contest. For much of the first hour Dreger, Lacey, Dyer and Falco had matched up well in their midfield battle with Waugh, Drinkeld, Gilfedder and Butters, while Evans and Tumusiime had held Webber and Hornby at bay.

The final thirty minutes, however, was a different story and Hamilton must have been pleased that, for the first time in their present winning trot, his team finished stronger than the opposition. He might also have been encouraged by the form of Daniel Leach and Matthew Bell who managed to reduce the threat posed by the pace of Aysen and the trickery of Imrie to only a very few anxious moments.