Stuart McLaren marked his return to the club he both captained and coached in the National Soccer League with the clinching goal in a 2-0 victory over Brisbane City in today's Premier League encounter at Spencer Park.

It wasn't a vintage performance by any means, but a 'new-look' Brisbane Strikers did just enough in the mud and rain to overcome a City team who made life extremely difficult and will probably be feeling a little miffed to have been beaten by two goals.

With City adopting primarily defensive tactics, Bobby Hamilton's team found time and space hard to come by as they laboured hard to break the resistance of the cellar dwellers. But a sixty-ninth minute strike by midfielder Damien Waugh and an emphatic eighty-ninth minute drive by McLaren proved enough to do the damage and keep the Strikers in touch with the Premier League's top four.

Strikers coach Bobby Hamilton must have been relieved to not only be able to call upon the services of McLaren, who received his clearance from Malaysian football authorities late on Friday, but also those of star midfielder Nathan Carloss, who was fit again after a long injury layoff, and defender Adam Webber who returned after a one-match suspension. New striker Barry Browett was also available, and came on as a substitute late in the game.

With Matthew Bell out of the side with a calf injury, Hamilton began with a three-man backline of Daniel Leach, Webber and Ross Duncan. McLaren, who took the captain's armband in Bell's absence, started up front alongside Greg Di Losa, while Waugh, Carloss, Stewart Drinkeld, Michael Zullo and Eli Gilfedder formed a five-man midfield contingent.

McLaren made his presence felt as early as the first minute when he got away down the left to square a ball to Di Losa, whose attempted side-footed shot was skied over City goalkeeper Griffin McMaster's crossbar.

But having survived that early scare, City set out their stall and went about frustrating the goal-shy visitors. A five-man backline marshalled by Justin Ansell and Simon Matthews, protected by a four-man midfield that pressed and harassed at every turn managed at times to compress play within a narrow band of around fifteen metres when the ball was around the half-way line. Despite the best endeavours of the Strikers' midfielders and back three to conjure openings by either knocking the ball over the top, or wide to Gilfedder or Carloss, opportunities were few and far between in the first half.

The best chances fell to McLaren, Di Losa and Zullo. In the seventeenth minute, a long pass over the top by Drinkeld found McLaren racing towards goal. McLaren expertly used his strength to hold off his marker and create time to hit a shot from the edge of the eighteen yard box that beat McMaster, but thudded against the base of a goalpost, before bouncing away to safety.

In the thirty-eighth minute Carloss, who had worked with surprising zest down the right touchline all through the half, considering that he had not played for almost two months, got behind the City defence to spear a low cross to the near post where Di Losa was lurking. Di Losa got an intelligent touch to the ball with the outside of his left boot, but instead of finishing in the goal the ball bounced against the advertising hoardings behind it.

Minutes before the half-time break Zullo came desperately close to scoring his first Premier League goal when a raid down the left saw a cross delivered to Di Losa's head. The big striker's well directed nod-down found the ever-busy Zullo stealing into the eighteen yard box. The diminutive young midfielder hit a powerful volley on the run but, with McMaster beaten, the ball slid away narrowly wide of the 'keeper's near post.

With the scores still deadlocked at the half-time break, Strikers' goalkeeper Antony Hall had had little to do except tidy up a few misdirected long balls out of the City midfield. This made his efforts inside fifteen minutes of the restart all the more meritorious, as City suddenly began to look as if they had ambitions beyond the mere acquisition of one point. A minute after the restart, City won a free kick in dangerous territory about twenty metres out from goal, and Daniel Corbett struck it low and hard under the Strikers' defensive wall. But the sort of shot that proved too much for Germany's Oliver Kahn in the Confederations Cup a few days ago against the Socceroos, was well covered by Antony Hall in the treacherous gluepot that passed for the goalmouth at the eastern end of the Spencer Park pitch. Hall got everything behind it to make, in the end, a fairly comfortable save.

Three minutes later, City's left winger Benn Schofield got in a good low cross which reached Glen Farinazzo, and Farinazzo's shot again brought a save out of Hall. A few minutes later, Hall denied the same player who had been played in by a long ball over the top of Adam Webber and Daniel Leach. With Webber and Leach attempting to hustle Farinazzo off the ball, Hall made a block at the striker's feet but could not hold it. With Strikers supporters' hearts in their throats while the ball bobbled around inside the six yard box, Webber hurdled Hall to get to the ball first and clear it to safety.

In the fifty-eighth minute, though, City should have gone a goal to the good when a raid down the right produced a good cross to the head of Schofield, who was completely unmarked near the back post. With Hall coming across the goal towards Schofield, the winger elected to send his header back towards the far corner, but he misdirected it across the face of goal and the Strikers survived.

The home side's big opportunity had gone. The Strikers, with the increasingly agitated Hamilton having come down from his previously elevated perch in the grandstand to get up close and personal with his players from the touchline, began to restore their grip on the flow of the game. In the sixty-first minute Waugh stole into the six yard box and probably should have scored when he stuck a foot out at a low cross from Gilfedder, who was enjoying a very active and productive spell down the left wing.

But soon after, with the away team's supporters becoming increasingly anxious about their team's failure to get an opening goal in what they were inclined to view as a 'must win' game, Waugh delivered the goods. By this stage Hamilton had brought off Stewart Drinkeld and substituted him with Browett, working a positional change that saw McLaren drop back to help direct play from midfield while Browett partnered Di Losa. The injection of McLaren into the midfield appeared to unsettle the composure of the City team through the centre of the park, and created a little more time and space for the visitors to work in.

In the sixty-ninth minute Webber won possession on the half way line and strode into the space ahead of him with the ball at his feet, before releasing a measured through-pass to Di Losa, who had managed to stay onside as City's long backline attempted to hold its ground. With the City defence chasing Di Losa back towards its penalty area, Di Losa checked inside a defender and slipped a clever short pass into the path of Waugh, who was making a trade-mark run from a deep position into City's eighteen yard box. The home side's defence was now breached and McMaster raced off his line to try to deny Waugh the time to pick his spot. Waugh, however, was a little too quick between the ears and clipped a shot without breaking stride wide of the 'keeper and into the far corner of the net to settle the nerves of his team and its supporters.

Not for the first time this season, Waugh's coolness under pressure had done the trick. But there was still some work to be done as City's gallant young side refused to cave in. They contested the last fifteen minutes as keenly as they had contested as the first fifteen, and they almost got their reward with seven minutes left when Duncan, playing his last match for the Strikers before returning home to the USA, almost brought a solid farewell performance undone when he slipped over in the mud while in possession of the ball, presenting City's substitute left winger Chris Newman with a clear run towards Hall's goal. With Strikers supporters holding their breath, Hall didn't let them down as he advanced to compress Newman's shooting angles and showed enough composure to stay upright as long as possible to block Newman's attempted near-post shot with one hand.

With Hall having resisted City's last stand, the Strikers pressed forward and, with a minute remaining, they won a free kick near the by-line just to the left of City's penalty area. The resulting dead ball was curled teasingly around McMaster's six-yard box to the back post where Di Losa stooped to send a header goalwards. McMaster blocked Di Losa's effort, but it rebounded out towards McLaren who must have looked like a Sherman tank to the City defender who rushed towards him to block the big man's shot. McLaren won the race to the ball and smashed it high into the top corner of the goal to finally snuff out City's resistance and make certain of the points.

After several minutes of mostly uneventful injury time, referee Jim Bellos blew the full-time whistle and the teams trooped off to the sounds of a rendition by Strikers supporters of McLaren's "Red Baron" signature tune. It was perhaps fitting because McLaren, even without producing his best, had put in a composed, skillful and arguably man-of-the-match performance before underlining his return to the club with his cracking match-sealing strike.

It wasn't a pretty win for the Strikers, but then again it was not the right kind of day, or the right kind of pitch, for a pretty performance. Aside from a fifteen minute spell at the beginning of the second half the Strikers had controlled the match, and several encouraging performances other than McLaren's were handed in to give Hamilton some reasons for optimism ahead of the severe test expected to be provided next Saturday by Rochedale Rovers.

Nathan Carloss did extremely well to play out the entire match in the heavy conditions, and Michael Zullo produced another eye-catching performance in midfield, as did Eli Gilfedder on the left wing. And while Greg Di Losa was not at his best, his contribution was nevertheless sufficient to have a exert a heavy influence in the creation of both goals. With McLaren back in harness and in good touch, and Carloss, Di Losa and now Barry Browett working their way towards full fitness, Hamilton can at last take comfort in having some options at his disposal as the opposition gets tougher over the next few weeks.