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Strikers Share Points with Rivers
The Brisbane Strikers remain unbeaten in the Premier League this season - but so do Pine Rivers - after the two teams played out a hard-fought 1-1 draw at Perry Park last night.
As is often the case in local derbies, much of the football was not pretty but the goals that broke the tension, scored by Josh Rose and Michael Butters, had something just a little bit special about them.
Strikers coach Bobby Hamilton resisted any temptation to tinker with the 3-5-2 formation that had served him well over the first three rounds of the season, despite beginning the game without a recognised left winger. The job of working on the left side of midfield was given to Nathan Carloss, with Damien Waugh, Jamie Lowndes and Stewart Drinkeld inside of him and Butters wide on the right. Once again Adam Webber, Matthew Bell and Daniel Leach formed a three-man back line, and Russell Woodruffe and Greg Di Losa played up front.
Pine Rivers, on the other hand, appeared to be playing with a 4-4-2 formation, with the pacey and elusive Rose and Tim Smits at the sharp end. Given the way Pine Rivers played in this contest, the numerical disadvantage in the midfield probably was of little consequence as far as they were concerned, as their game plan appeared to be to soak up whatever pressure the home side could apply while pumping out long balls for the two strikers to chase.
In the first half, it was easy to see why they would elect to play this way. While the Strikers tried to knock the ball around they found it difficult to penetrate a swarming Rivers defence which gave Carloss and Butters very little room to move on the flanks. As soon as the visitors picked up the scraps and released the ball forward Rose and Smits were mobile, making darting little runs and working off each other with impressive telepathy. In behind them, midfielders Aaron Thiesfield and Dean Peltohaka were busily feeding off any scraps to maximise the pressure on the Strikers defenders created by the fast counter-attack.
But while the visitors were having slightly the better of thing early on, there were very few clear-cut opportunities for either side in a keenly contested opening fifteen minutes. A left footed shot by Russell Woodruffe, who was set up just inside the penalty area by his partner Di Losa, which went wide of Troy Reed's left post was the best chance the Strikers created in this period.
At the other end, Rose and Smits looked the more threatening front pairing. In the seventeenth minute, Rose managed to cut inside the Strikers defence and work the ball on to his less favoured right foot for a low shot which brought a good save out of Strikers goalkeeper and skipper, Antony Hall.
Things were beginning to warm up around the penalty areas and, a few minutes later, a raking low cross across the face of the visitors' penalty area created an opening for Carloss, whose low shot was well saved in the last real action before the deadlock was broken.
Unfortunately for the vocal supporters of the home side, the deadlock was broken at Hall's end of the ground. The Rivers once again mopped up a Strikers attack and released the ball quickly to Smits, who in turn slipped a good through ball to Rose. Rose had Bell and Webber in close attention, but produced a quick turn and a withering burst of speed to get inside Bell and into the Strikers' penalty area. Rose still had a bit to do as Hall came off his line in a flash to snuff out the danger, but Rose was simply too quick and got to the ball first, rounding Hall to tuck the ball into the corner of the net.
It was a quality goal by a young striker who looks every inch an A-League player, but has found himself unwanted in that capacity in Queensland.
The Strikers went strongly about the task of restoring parity. In the thirty-fourth minute Carloss, who had been forced to wear Thiesfield and Peltohaka like gloves, at last managed to shake off his marker and square a good pass to Waugh, who got in a left-footed shot that was well saved by Reed. Minutes later, Waugh bobbed up on the right side of midfield to send a searching cross to the back post where Di Losa just failed to connect with a diving header. Soon after, a determined surge by Bell into the Rivers' penalty area forced the well-organised visiting defence into some rather ugly scrambling to hold him out.
The Strikers were beginning to impose themselves, but Rivers continued to threaten on the break and Thiesfield came close to making it 2-0 in the forty-third minute when a high ball was sent towards Rose in the Strikers' penalty area. Rose sent Drinkeld tumbling as he won the ball, before turning the ball inside for Thiesfield whose shot was well saved by Hall.
The home side went into the break 1-0 down but came back out in a determined mood. The Rivers' back four of Joel Hale, Chris Hagel, Corey Hagel and Micheal Sciardi were to get a much sterner workout in the second stanza as the home side's midfielders took a grip on proceedings and forced them to defend deeper.
Woodruffe was the first to rattle the visitors' cage, seizing on a loose ball in the penalty area to hit a shot on the turn in the forty-ninth minute which was smothered by Reed at his near post.
A few minutes later, though, the home side got back on level terms with a goal that lacked nothing in comparison to Rose's earlier effort. Left fullback Leach, who had joined a Strikers attack, found himself chasing back to the halfway line as the Rivers threatened a counter attack. He did so with great effect, dispossessing a midfielder and spinning away to deliver an incisive ball into the path of Carloss who had set off down the left wing. With the Rivers defence having been caught unawares and turned around, Carloss was in behind them and he took advantage by sending an early square ball low across the penalty area.
This kind of pass can be a nightmare to defend when you are running back towards your own goal, and it certainly proved so for the likes of Hale and Sciardi, who failed to deal with it. Carloss's teasing cross got right through them and out wide to the right edge of the penalty area where Butters was running in. The young winger then made a difficult task look easy as he managed to apply a perfect volley to a ball that was fairly skimming across his body and sent it under the diving Reed to finish in the far corner of the goal.
With the momentum having swung the home side's way, Carloss again tormented the Rivers' defence a few minutes later, getting to the by-line inside the penalty area to cut a ball back for Woodruffe, whose shot went narrowly wide. Then, in the fifty-ninth minute, the Strikers probably should have hit the front when another cross from the left was nodded across goal by Di Losa for Lowndes, who met it on the volley. On this occasion, though, Lowndes failed to hit the target with the goal at his mercy.
By midway through the second half the Strikers were in control. Waugh and Drinkeld, in particular, were virtually doing as they liked in midfield, and Butters was beginning to have a productive time wide on the right, getting behind the Rivers defence and delivering some quality crosses. Rose and Smits were suffering ball deprivation and, on the rare occasions when something came their way, Webber, Bell and Leach were coping with them quite comfortably.
The two coaches began using their reserves, with Ross Duncan coming on to replace Woodruffe, and David Thomas replacing Waugh for the Strikers, while Seb Tatchell replaced Pablo Aviles for the visitors. The flow of the game remained unchanged, though, with the noisiest Strikers supporters who were gathered at the southern end of the Bill Waddell stand getting their money's worth as the play focused mainly around Reed's penalty area.
The eighty-first minute almost produced a fortuitous winner for the home side when Duncan, working with Di Losa, played his partner into space in Reed's overworked penalty area. Di Losa was beaten to the ball by a Rivers defender, who saw his intended clearance ricochet off Di Losa's leg and just wide of the stranded Reed's right hand upright.
The home side continued to do the pressing, and were perhaps unlucky not to get a reward in injury time when Di Losa, foraging alone down the inside-right channel as the Strikers worked the ball through the midfield, went on a run which finished with the tall Striker cutting inside his defender and fashioning a left footed shot on the turn which Reed did well to keep out at his near post.
That was the last serious action of the game, which ended seconds later. Had it been a boxing bout, most judges probably would have awarded the bout to the home side on points. From virtually the moment they went behind in the first half, the Strikers took a grip on the pattern and flow of the game and created nearly all of the good chances for the rest of the match.
But while they probably had a lot to be pleased about from this point of view, Hamilton and his players might be annoyed that they didn't convert more of their second half opportunities and take all three points.
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