Sydney Olympic 2-1 Bonnyrigg White Eagles

Sydney Olympic has continued its impressive record in season openers, with a gritty 2-1 win over the Bonnyrigg White Eagles on Sunday afternoon at Belmore Sports Ground. We have now won 7 of our past 8 Round 1 encounters, with the other one being a draw away to APIA Leichhardt in 2016.

Sydney Olympic started the match off brightly and dominated the first 15 minutes. We duly got our reward early on, as new recruit Alejandro Sanchez was put through on goal before he was brought down inside the box by the Bonnyrigg Goalkeeper. Jason Madonis stepped up to take the spot-kick and buried it to put us 1-0 up and we were looking good. We could have easily made it 2-0 during that first half, but for a brilliant point-blank double save from the Bonnyrigg Goalkeeper. After this period of dominance, we seemed to take our foot off the pedal slightly which allowed Bonnyrigg to get back in to the match. They had a series of good opportunities themselves to score and equalise, but Paul Henderson who was celebrating game 200 for the Club stood in their way, making a couple of good saves to keep the score at 1-0. Which was how the score remained at the half-time break.

The start to the second-half was in total contrast to how we started the first-half, we looked really slow, lacked spark and we were reduced to walking pace. Sure, the conditions would have played their part as it was quite warm on Sunday, but all it did was give Bonnyrigg the impetus to step up their game and step up they did. They dominated the first 20 or so minutes of the second-half, putting us under all sorts of pressure. Paul Henderson made a series of good saves, before Bonnyrigg finally got their equaliser from a corner. It was the conceding of this goal that seemed to wake us up and we started play with a bit more urgency. Both sides were looking for a winner, fortunately for us it would come for Sydney Olympic as Sanchez was once again put through on goal, but this time he avoided the challenge and clipped the ball over the advancing Bonnyrigg Goalkeeper, to put us back into the lead with around 10 minutes to go. There were some nervy moments late on but we managed to hold on for an important victory.

Overall it was a patchy performance from Sydney Olympic, but by the same token you do not want to be playing champagne football and reaching your peak performance in Round 1 of the competition. We got the victory and more importantly we got the 3 points, we now must and can definitely improve from here.

For the Club Championship our U18’s lost 1-0 and our U20’s also lost 1-0.

Next week we have a tough assignment against one of the competition favourites in APIA Leichhardt. It is on Sunday, March 18 at Lambert Park, Kick-Off is at 5.30pm. Get down there to support the boys.