Sydney Olympic 2-1 Manly United

For the second Sunday Afternoon in a row we were welcomed by unseasonably hot conditions. There was a bit of relief this week with the cloud cover and the temperature thankfully being a couple of degrees lower. But certainly, they would have been trying conditions for the players once again.

Nevertheless the players put in another good shift and another solid performance to record our second win of the season, seeing off the Defending Champions, Manly United.

We started the match off like a house on fire and dominated the early proceedings. We came close to opening the scoring 10 minutes into the game, only for that chance to crash against the woodwork. We wouldn’t have to wait long after that to see a Sydney Olympic goal though, as only a minute or so later some nice work by Tom Whiteside down the right flank saw him then put in a decent cross, which was fumbled into the path of Alejandro Sanchez, who with good reflexes put the rebound away and put us 1-0 up. We did not have to wait long for goal number 2, as a minute later we were on the attack once again through Max Burgess, who drove into the Manly penalty area and then delivered a shot that rattled the crossbar. Fortunately, Jason Madonis was on hand to collect the rebound and put the ball into the back of the net to give us a 2-0 lead. Just 5 minutes after this, we looked as though we had grabbed goal number 3 as we had the ball in the back of the net again, only for it to be ruled out for offside this time.
Manly were never really in the first-half, they had a couple of half chances here and there but in reality, they did not seriously look like troubling Paul Henderson. Other than that, we were undoubtedly the dominant side throughout that first-half and well worth our 2-0 lead going into the half-time break.

We started off the second-half very well, as we went forward looking for goal number 3 and in the first 5 minutes of the second-half it was all Sydney Olympic. So, it was worrying that with their first real chance of the game, Manly managed to score, luckily for us it was ruled out for offside, but the warning signs were there. Manly carved out another chance not long after this which hit the crossbar. This 15/20-minute period was their best spell of the game and it put us under a bit of pressure defensively. After this period, we seemed to regain our composure and looked comfortable with the ball once again, without creating too many clear-cut chances. But with around 10 minutes to go we opened the door for Manly by conceding what looked like a soft penalty, which was duly dispatched. All of a sudden, we were under pressure again as Manly sniffed an equaliser. From a match that we should have been out of sight in at half-time if we took our chances, it was now all hands to the pump to try and hold on to the 2-1 lead, which fortunately we ended up doing as we did hold on for a 2-1 win.

So it was another good performance from the boys, as we were well deserved winners, but there are plenty of things to work on and we can definitely improve.

For the Club Championship, the U18s lost 5-0 while the U20s lost 3-0, not great results again for these teams and as we all know, relegation in NPL NSW happens via the Club Championship, combined results of First Grade, 20s and 18s, so we really need to pull our finger out here.

We now have a short turnaround with our next game being this Friday Afternoon, March 30, against Hakoah Sydney City-East – which is obviously a Public Holiday – Kick-Off is at 4pm at Belmore Sports Ground. Get down there and support the club.