Looking for that Killer Instinct - Sydney Olympic 0-0 Wollongong Wolves

Disappointingly our Round 9 home match was moved from Belmore Sports Ground to Lambert Park, thankfully we have a fairly decent record at the Leichhardt venue, our players seem to enjoy playing there and it’s a relatively short trip for the supporters. So all things considered there was no real trepidation about having to play there.

Of course it sucks when you do not control what you are doing or your own destiny, which is the situation we find ourselves in and have been in for a very long time. We are left to wait and see what another party is doing before we can do anything. It’s no way to live let alone run a Football Club.

That is why the Tempe re-development is so important for our Club. It’s a chance to finally have a home base of our own after many failed attempts, where our destiny and our future can lie in our own hands. Not much information is readily available about the current situation, but we all hope things are on the right track in this mighty endeavour.

Onto the game, the opening moments of the contest matched the weather of the day, very un-inspiring in large parts and quite gloomy. We started the match a little slowly and took a while to find our feet. Wolves dominated the early proceedings and had a couple of really good chances to open the scoring, a combination of poor finishing by them and some good goalkeeping by Paul Henderson kept the score at 0-0. After this though we came into our own and started to boss the game, as a result we created several chances to take the lead before half-time, all of which came to no avail and we went to the break dead-locked at 0-0.

The game livened up in the 2^nd half with both teams having chances to score. It
was one of those games where we looked in control for most parts, but the danger of conceding always seemed to be there which kept everyone who was there on their toes. 15 minutes into the 2^nd half things looked to have changed for the worse, as Oliver Green picked up his 2^nd yellow card for something he said to the referee, meaning we had to play the last 30 minutes of the match with 10 men, which is never easy. As is regularly the case with these situations though, it was the team with 10 men who seemed to grow an extra leg as we were the ones who pushed even harder to find that elusive goal. We created several good chances to score but we were often foiled by some last ditch defending from the Wolves players and goalkeeper combined with some poor finishing. There was to be no last ditch winner and we had to settle for a 0-0 Draw.

We might be lacking goals and that “killer instinct” this season, but we are working hard on the pitch and we are a side that is hard to beat and there is something to be said about that. Combine that with our resolve and togetherness, which this team currently seems to have and they are good attributes to possess.

In the U18’s we had a 0-0 Draw, and in the 20’s we had a 1-1 Draw.

In regards to the Club Championship, this has been spoken about a lot already this season given our current predicament. It runs on the following formula:
1^st Grade Points (x4)
20’s Points (x2)
18’s Points (x1)
Using this weekend’s results as an example where we picked up Draws in all 3 Grades, it’s obviously 1 point for a Draw in a Football match, this gives us 4+2+1 = 7 points contributed towards the Club Championship, which highlights the need for victories to avoid being relegated.

Last Wednesday Night at Belmore Sports Ground we were in FFA Cup 6^th Round Qualifying action against Wollongong United. It was a fairly comfortable match with us qualifying for the next Round thanks to a straight-forward 2-0 win. A goal each from Eoin Montford and Adrian Vranic in the last minute of both halves was enough to see us through to the Final Qualifying Round, where we will play Sydney United. Details for the match are TBC.

For Round 10 in the League next Sunday, we are away to Rockdale, Kickoff is 5pm.