ASA: Perth Glory now have the luxury of playing their last two games in party mode after they captured Australia’s National Soccer League premiership title for the third time on Wednesday night with a deserving 2-0 victory over Sydney United in humid conditions.
The Glory were on top for the whole match at Members Equity Stadium and the loss for United means they are all but out of the finals race.
Glory coach Mich d’Avray said it was the best premiership the Glory had won.
“The performance tonight was good. We lifted the tempo quite considerably and we kept the ball well”, the coach said. “To me this is the best premiership the club has won when you take into account all the circumstances. There was the loss of personnel in the off-season, the heavy schedule of away games in the first round and the season-ending injuries to Matty Horsley and Scott Miller”.
“But the team kept on playing and in the second half of the season, most of our games were at home. The team was under intense pressure to perform in front of their home fans, and they did. This is a fantastic achievement”.
It was quite a disappointing effort from United considering they had to win the game – which was always going to be a tough ask – to play in the post-season, but they just couldn’t find an identity on the pitch.
The match simply reinforced what coach Grant Lee said before the match: that they are short on depth across the park and that they are lacking two or three quality players.
United were restricted to long range efforts for the match with Anthony Doumanis, Labinot Haliti and Dean Heffernan each trying their luck from distance in the first half.
Doumanis at least offered some attacking zeal through the middle at times, but struggled when the support around him wasn’t there.
United were on the back foot right from the onset, and if it wasn’t for the heroics of goalkeeper Liam Reddy, the score would have been much more devastating.
In the opening 10 minutes, Reddy thwarted several crosses from wing backs Jade North and Jamie Coyne – one of the Glory’s best on the night – after some promising pieces of play by the home side down the flanks.
But on 20 minutes, there was nothing he could do to stop a Damian Mori thunderbolt.
After great work by Coyne down the right, he threaded the ball to the waiting Mori in the box. After seeming to have either stumbled over the ball or faked a strike, Mori then unleashed a brilliant right-footed shot from within the box that gave Reddy no chance.
15 minutes later, Perth should have doubled their lead had it not been for Reddy’s excellent reaction save.
Coyne again drifted into the box from the right and his centred ball found Bobby Despotovski just outside the six-yard-box. His first time shot from close range looked to have guaranteed him his 100th Glory goal but Reddy amazingly dived to his left to parry the ball away.
“We created a lot of chances which was good but their keeper was unbelievable and made a lot of saves. If it weren’t for the keeper, it would have been a different scoreline”, d’Avray said.
“(He was) excellent”, Lee said of Reddy”.
“Liam’s been a little bit below par over the last couple of weeks and he has been relying on the defenders around him to do his job sometimes, so we had a chat about that during the week and (tonight) he just rose to the occasion. We could have been 3-0 down at half time”.
Perth created chance after chance in the first half as they found plenty of room down the flanks. Adrian Caceres – who started for Brad Hassell – had an explosive opening period and with his pace, had often got the better of his older United counterparts.
But two minutes into the second half, United should have been back on level terms.
After a cross from the right, skipper Mark Rudan headed towards the goal. The effort was pushed away by keeper Jason Petkovic only as far as Mark Beldham, who then somehow flicked the rebound over the bar from point blank range.
“…If Beldham could have tucked that away, it would have put pressure on Perth to come back out and do something”, Lee said.
“But we tried to keep ourselves in the game, and Liam contributed enormously to that. He had a very good game for us tonight”.
Just after the hour mark, Reddy was at his best yet again.
After some excellent build-up by Perth, Gary Faria collected the ball in the semi-circle of the penalty box and laid off a short pass in the air to Despotovski, whose menacing volley was somehow pushed over the bar by Reddy.
Reddy had more than compensated for his side’s lacklustre defending on the night.
But, like most good things, his domination in between the posts had to come to an end, and with it, Sydney’s finals chances.
With 9 minutes left, Perth grabbed the inevitable sealer to clinch the match and top spot.
North was released by substitute Hassell down the left flank before the former squared to another replacement, Nick Mrdja, in the box.
Mrdja then struck the ball with his favoured left foot past the outstretched Reddy to cap off a memorable play for the substitutes.
D’Avray said he may look at resting a few key players from the last two matches of the season.
Lee on the other hand, was explaining why his team was not up there.
“We are, as a club at the moment, in a rebuilding phase. We have a lot of young, naïve kids in the squad, we don’t have a lot of money to play with, they’re all part-time footballers, and it shows”, he said.
Lee went on to say that his side ran out of depth towards the end of this season and that they lacked the quality players to come off the bench and make an impact when things weren’t going well for them in matches.
Meanwhile, Rudan came off on 69 minutes with a groin injury and is listed as day-to-day. – By Joseph Sapienza (ASA)
(Round 12 Deferred Fixture)
PERTH GLORY 2 (D Mori 20′, N Mrdja 81′)
SYDNEY UNITED 0
2003/04 NSL REVIEW, ROUND 24 Results
WOLLONGONG WOLVES 0
ADELAIDE UNITED 1 (M Brooks 80′)
FOOTBALL KINGZ 2 (N Hickey 19′, H Ngata 59′)
SOUTH MELBOURNE 0
MARCONI STALLIONS 3 (A Brosque 23′, J Harris 47’+, C Gibson 66′)
SYDNEY UNITED 0
PERTH GLORY 2 (D Mori 27′, A Caceres 85′)
NEWCASTLE UNITED 0
NORTHERN SPIRIT 0
PARRAMATTA POWER 1 (S Petrovski 23′)
MELBOURNE KNIGHTS 2 (R Vargas 27′, S Oksuz 88′)
BRISBANE STRIKERS 0
SYDNEY OLYMPIC – BYE
TABLE - After Round 24
TEAM P W D L B GF GA PTS
Perth Glory 22 17 2 3 2 50 18 53
Parramatta Power 22 14 3 5 1 53 28 45
Marconi Stallions 22 10 7 5 1 27 22 37
Adelaide United 21 10 7 4 2 26 21 37
South Melbourne 22 11 3 8 2 38 19 36
Brisbane Strikers 22 9 5 8 2 25 28 32
Sydney Olympic 22 7 7 8 2 24 28 28
Sydney United 22 7 7 8 2 16 21 28
Newcastle United 22 6 6 10 2 18 28 24
Wollongong Wolves 22 6 5 11 2 30 41 23
Northern Spirit 21 6 3 12 2 26 31 21
Melbourne Knights 22 5 4 13 2 19 41 19
Football Kingz 22 3 3 16 2 21 47 12