What was that? – Sydney Olympic 2-3 Blacktown City

The undefeated start to the season for Sydney Olympic is over, after an abysmal first-half display which saw us gift Blacktown City 3 goals to see them take complete control of the match. What made it even worse is that there was a pretty decent turnout of people who rocked up on a Sunday Afternoon at Belmore Sports Ground to watch the team play, and to dish that type of performance up was nothing short of a disgrace.

The match began poorly as barely 3 minutes into the game, we were picking the ball out of our own net after an innocuous looking Blacktown cross was headed into his own net by Yianni Spyrakis when there appeared to be no danger at all. Not even 2 minutes after that, we were picking the ball out of our own net once again, as some more poor defending saw Blacktown get in behind our defence and sneak a second goal passed Paul Henderson to make the score 2-0 with not even 5 minutes gone on the clock, to the disbelief of all the Sydney Olympic Supporters. Goal number 3 eventuated after one of my personal pet hates. After receiving a free-kick in a relatively good position we decided to play a cute short pass, this was followed by another attempted short pass which was then intercepted by Blacktown, who then launched a long ball to their front man and he made no mistake to make it 3-0 for Blacktown after 30 minutes.

What’s wrong with putting in a dangerous cross these days? It seems to have gone out of fashion. Instead passing the ball backwards and sideways seems to be the favoured option. For the rest of the half we had no answers and went to the half-time break 3-0 down.

Usually after a first-half like that, the boos would ring around the ground, but this time there was not a peep as the fans sat there in disbelief at the rubbish they had just witnessed.

The first 15 minutes of the second-half was much of the same, it looked like a bunch of strangers who have never played the sport before, it was a crazy thing to see. It took a goal from the tireless Yu Kuboki, who did not stop running all day, to wake the team up as he chased a through ball and put it passed the Blacktown goalkeeper to give us some faint hope. In the last 20 minutes we stepped up our play and went searching for goals. With around 10 minutes to go Yu Kuboki finished off another great chance to grab his second goal of the day and make the score 3-2, giving us the last 10 minutes to throw everything at getting the equaliser. We did have a good chance late on but we could not take advantage. In the end we left ourselves with just too much to do after our poor first-half and we had suffered our first loss of the season.

The lack of substitutions was also confusing, we were down 3-0 and playing poorly, but not one change was made at half-time. In fact the only change for the whole match was taking Yu Kuboki off with 5 minutes to go which made no sense at all. Sure he would have been tired as he did not stop running all game, but he was our best player yesterday and would have been full of confidence and looking to complete his hat-trick, bewildering to say the least.

For the first 2 months of the season we have been without 3-4 important players due to injury, players who are integral pieces of the squad. As a result we have had to rely on the same 12-13 players for the start of the season and you could tell that it had caught up with most of the players as we looked tired and lacked energy and enthusiasm for the first 60 minutes.

We need bounce back and bounce back fast, as we have a tough run of matches over the next few weeks.

In terms of the Club Championship, the U20’s were trounced 6-1, and the U18’s lost again, this time going down 4-2. A horrible weekend all round.

Our next match is in the FFA Cup this Wednesday Night, April 26 against Picton Rangers at Picton’s Ground, Hume Oval, Kick-Off is at 7.30pm.

Our next match in the League is next Sunday Afternoon, April 30, against old foes APIA Leichhardt at Lambert Park, Kick-Off is at 4.45pm.