Sydney Olympic once again paid for not being
able to put teams away and in the end, you’d have to say that we were somewhat
fortunate to grab a draw with the last kick of the game, to salvage a point
from the contest.
The beginning of the match was always going to be a tight and tense affair, as
Hakoah are the type of team that do not give much away and are hard in the
tackle, to the point of being over-physical during their matches. As witnessed
in our first encounter with them earlier in the season, where you would be not
be wrong if you thought they were meat proprietors instead of footballers. We
had the best chance during the early stages of the first-half through Jason
Madonis, a chance which was well saved by the Hakoah goalkeeper. We were on top
and it would not be long before we did open the scoring, Alejandro Sanchez was
put through on goal and he made no mistake to finish coolly and put us 1-0 up.
Sydney Olympic dominated the rest of the first-half, in terms of play,
possession, pressure and chances. The opposition goalkeeper was having a good
game, keeping his side in it. Despite our ladder position, we have had a
problem this season in finishing teams off during matches and it was the same story
again on Saturday, we should have put them to the sword and been well out of
sight at half-time, but we were not clinical enough in front of goal and at the
half-time break we had to settle for a 1-0 lead.
If in the first-half it was total domination from Sydney Olympic, then the
second-half would play out a little bit differently, it was a much more even
contest. We carved out some half chances during the early stages of the second-half,
but we could not add to our 1-0 advantage. After this period, the match would
turn on its head as within the space of about 5 minutes, mid-way through that
second-half, the complexion of the match had changed and we somehow found ourselves
2-1 behind. Firstly, through a speculative and flukey long rage goal and secondly,
from a deflected freekick that found its way into our net. From being
comfortably in the lead, we now found ourselves behind and would now have a hard
task to turn it around. Credit to the players though, who did not switch off or
give up and deep into stoppage time we managed to salvage something from the
match. Max Burgess would be the hero, as the ball was fed to him on the edge of
the box, he turned his defender inside out and with the last play of the game, he
hit his shot, which was too hot to handle for the Hakoah goalkeeper securing us
a 2-2 draw.
It is never easy to play Hakoah at their place and it certainly wasn’t on
Saturday Evening. We showed great character to keep fighting right until the
last minute, for which we were eventually rewarded.
The loss of George Timotheou for this match, who suffered an injury during the
week was immense and it was quite obvious that he was not there, hopefully the
injury is not too serious and we see him back soon.
As surely all Sydney Olympic Supporters would be aware of by now, Sydney
Olympic is leading the competition after 15 rounds and are right in the mix to
finish 1st. But there is no such thing as destiny and nothing is ever handed to
you in this competition and with APIA challenging us all the way, we will have
to work hard in every match, if we are to stay in 1st.
In the Club Championship, the U18s won 3-1 while the U20s lost 1-0.
The matches do not get any easier and our next match is another important one.
A home match which has been moved to Lambert Park against the Marconi
Stallions, on Saturday Night, June 23. Kick-Off is at 7.45pm.
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