A great crowd rocked up to Belmore Sports Ground on Sunday afternoon to see if a miracle would occur. Would we first and foremost do our job and get the victory against Sydney United and would one of our eternal enemies Hakoah, do us a favour against another old rival APIA. It was all very exciting and nerve racking trying to watch the game and then looking at the phone to see what was happening down the road.
For our match, it was a first-half in which we totally dominated and started off like a house on fire. We had the ball in the back of the net very early on, but the referee decided to disallow it. Not long after this, we did get our goal through some good build-up play and a brilliant finish from Alejandro Sanchez, sending the crowd into a frenzy. We had several, clear-cut, golden opportunities to increase our lead throughout the first-half, but some fine goalkeeping and more importantly some poor finishing from us kept Sydney United in the game, who late-on in that first-half, went down to 10 men after a last man challenge which if it did not occur, would have had Alejandro Sanchez 1-on-1 with the goalkeeper and almost certainly a goal.
At half-time we went to the break leading 1-0, while over at Lambert Park, we were astonished to learn that Hakoah were actually the ones leading 1-0 there at half-time. In perhaps what was a good omen or some bit of irony, Hakoah’s goal-scorer was former Sydney Olympic player Amaury Gauthier.
Like we have seen a few times this season and also in the reverse fixture against Sydney United earlier in the season, we struggled to play our normal game against the 10-men and for some reason even retreated into our shell. With this nervy backdrop, we were finding out via updates, that APIA had equalised early in the second-half to make their game 1-1. The nerves were really jangling now and the tension was filtering throughout the ground. We didn’t know whether to push for more goals or to hold on to what we had and this mindset clearly played tricks on the minds of the players. But despite this, we still had more than enough chances to kill the game off and ease our nerves at least at the ground. With 5 minutes to go, we were dismayed to hear that APIA were awarded a penalty in their game, fortunately for us that was missed and Hakoah went down the other end and scored themselves to take the lead, the cheers at Belmore were as loud for that as for our goal.
As full-time was blown at Lambert Park, APIA had been defeated 2-1 by Hakoah, meaning all we had to do was hold on to our 1-0 lead or at the very least get a draw and the Minor Premiership was ours. The full-time whistle was blown a few minutes later at Belmore, cue the pitch invasion and the trophy was on its way to Belmore.
It was a fantastic moment for all Sydney Olympic Supporters and everyone involved at Sydney Olympic as we had clinched our 5th Minor Premiership in our history – (1958, 1960, 2003, 2011, 2018)
Of course this is Australia, and much more importance is given to the Grand Final Winner, as they are the team which are declared the Champions of the season, so the job is only half done. We celebrate and bask in what we have achieved, but we’ve got to push on now.
The capture of the Premiership also qualifies us for the National NPL Finals Series, which is a tournament for the Minor Premiers of the 8 Australian State and Territory Football Federations. The reward for the Winner of this tournament, is to qualify directly for the 2019 FFA Cup National Round of 32.
In the Club Championship, the U18s won 3-1 and in the U20s we lost 4-0. We ended up finishing 4th in the Club Championship, on the face of it very respectable. But look a little closer and First Grade carried us to safety this season, we cannot afford to be that bad again in the U18s and U20s again.
For finishing 1st, we have earned a week off in Week 1 of the Finals, so we will sit back and see how it unfolds and find out who we play the week after.
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