Sydney Olympic got back to winning ways on
Saturday Night, seeing off defending Champions Manly United 2-1 away from home.
It was a match we dominated but needed some late heroics to secure the
all-important 3 points.
We started the match off very well and very quickly seized control of the
contest. We were on the front foot and had a chance to take the lead early on,
the chance was saved by the Manly goalkeeper. It did not take long for Sydney
Olympic to find the back of the net, as the ball fell into the path of Radovan
Pavicevic, who made no mistake by putting the chance away to give us an early
1-0 lead. We had a couple more chances inside the first 20 minutes to really
put some space between ourselves and Manly, unfortunately we were unable to put
away our chances and add to the 1-0 score-line in this time, we were clearly
dominating. Perhaps predictably, not long after this passage of play, Manly
went down the other end, and with their first real clear-cut chance of the
first-half they equalised. Our heads dropped a little bit and perhaps sensing
this, Manly bossed the closing stages of the first-half and even had a few
chances late-on to go in front. Thankfully for us the half-time break arrived
and we went to the sheds all locked up at 1-1.
In somewhat of a continuation from the second-half, we remained on the backfoot
during the opening stages of the second-half and we may well have found
ourselves behind, but we survived. After this we got ourselves back into the
contest, the introduction midway through the second-half of Nicola Kuleski and
Jason Madonis, certainly gave us the injection we needed as we once again re-asserted
our dominance. We began to pass it around better and carved out several chances
as a result, we had them trapped inside their own half for the final 25 minutes
and it seemed only a matter of time before we found the winner. This confidence
seemed to diminish as every minute passed by and we began to resign ourselves
to the 1-1 result, but up-stepped Max Burgess with only a couple of minutes to
go, who did well to control the ball and then shoot quickly passed the Manly goalkeeper
and into the net, to put us 2-1 up. There were the usual nervy moments late-on
but we held on for the huge victory.
So it was good to get back to winning ways, especially at a venue where it is
always difficult to get something from, the players and coaching staff must be commended
for how they’ve bounced back, after a tough last couple of weeks.
It is fair to say that if the result didn’t end up being what it was, this blog
would have been about something entirely different. Like how do certain people,
make it all the way to that level as a referee and not know anything about the game.
After the signings of Brendan Hooper and Zac Mackenzie in the signing window,
the Club has also added attacker and former Sydney Olympic player James
Demetriou, who played with us in 2013 before heading to Europe where he has
played for the last 5 or so years, a good addition to the squad.
In the Club Championship, the U18s lost 3-0 while the U20s lost 4-0. Thank God
for First Grade.
Our next match is another important one, this coming Saturday Afternoon June 16,
away to Hakoah Sydney City-East, at Hensley Athletic Field in Eastgardens.
Kick-Off is set for 4.30pm.
No comments:
Post a Comment