Sydney Olympic has continued its great early
season form, seeing off the always difficult Blacktown City at Belmore Sports
Ground on Sunday. Grinding out the victory in what was at times a bruising
affair with Blacktown City, in a match which saw both sides reduced to 10-men.
The victory will likely come at a cost for us as Hagi Gligor was subbed off only
5 minutes into the match, after being on the receiving end of a shocking challenge
which was for some strange reason unseen by the referee. I have been informed
that the injury is a bad one and that he could miss between 8-12 weeks. We will
also definitely be without William Angel for next week, as he managed to get
himself sent off in the second-half.
It was a cautious beginning to the match by both teams and fairly soon it
turned into a battle for midfield supremacy, with clear cut chances proving
hard to come by. With the wind howling it made things a little difficult for
the players trying to judge their passes and runs. As a result, the first-half
was mostly devoid of clear cut opportunities, with both sides reduced to
half-chances for the most part. We probably shaded it in the first-half in
terms of possession and dominance and we definitely did have the best chance of
the first-half, as Jason Madonis was found with a cross all alone at the back
post but unfortunately, he skewed his volley wide. Around mid-way through the
first half a Blacktown player was given a straight red card for a studs-up
challenge on Jinya An. Disappointingly though, we seemed to relax and step back
after this moment instead of attacking them, which resulted in the first-half
we witnessed, as described above. At half-time the score was dead-locked at
0-0.
As a whole, the second-half generally went the
same way as the first-half. We were the better side against what was now a
10-man Blacktown City and dominated proceedings for the first 20 minutes of the
second-half. We looked threatening going forward and eventually we got our
reward as Max Burgess headed home from a Jinya An corner. It was not long after
this when we were reduced to 10-men with William Angel given his marching orders
for picking up his second yellow card, it looked very soft it must be said.
Naturally a team like Blacktown City were never going to just accept defeat and
they began to push hard in search of an equaliser, Tom Whiteside and George
Timotheou in defence worked hard to keep them at bay and Paul Henderson made a
couple of good saves also. There were some nervy moments late on but we held on
for the 1-0 win and our second clean sheet in a row.
So we have now gone 4 wins from 4 at home this season, in what was another good
win for Sydney Olympic and already this season, we have shown that we can win
matches playing in a variety of ways, against different types of opposition and
in many types of conditions. We have built ourselves a good platform to now go
on and have a good season.
For the Club Championship, the U18s lost 4-0 and the U20s lost 5-1, another
terrible weekend for these teams as they both got hammered. If First Grade
wasn’t going so well this season, we’d be in all sorts of trouble.
In last Friday’s – The Greek Herald – the paper
published an interview it had with CEO John Boulous. The gist of it was that he
and the board are working hard to build Sydney Olympic back up into a stable
club off the field and improve all facets of the club on-field with our youth,
womens, first grade teams and for them to all be successful, getting more fans engaged
and getting them to come back to matches etc. All very nice admirable stuff and
we hope to see the improvement continue.
Of course, the most pressing issue for the club and has been for God knows how
long, is the lack of a permanent base. Since 2014 we have seen many announcements
and read a lot of articles about the proposed Tempe project. I have no idea
what is happening and I wouldn’t know how it works except that a lot of
lobbying would be going on, but we have seen nothing as yet. All I’ll say is if
some park sides are able to get their local councils to stump up millions for them
I see no reason why a club like Sydney Olympic can’t get the same support,
given how much Sydney Olympic Supporters have contributed to the local area
generally. We will just have to wait and see what happens now with the Inner-West
Council and the club.
Our next match is this Sunday, April 22, at home against Rockdale. As we all
know, this particular team has free reign and enjoys the protection of the
authorities and of FNSW to do as they please. From attacking our elderly
supporters to damaging our property. These racists will once again come to
provoke the Sydney Olympic Supporters and they will try to do what they always
do, cause trouble at the ground and cause problems for Sydney Olympic.
Hopefully the board has all bases covered ready for anything that eventuates
from this mob. Kick-Off is at 3pm.
Let’s all unite and get down to the game on Sunday.
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