Olympic v Marconi

Round 21 report by Fred Legget
Sydney Olympic v Marconi-Fairfield


Last week, no sooner had the fourth official held up his blackboard to inform us that normal time had elapsed and there were three minutes of time added on, than up popped Olympic and bang whooshka...Marconi were beat.

Continued something of a trend for late goals.

Last night, in a rather unattractive match, Mark Babic poked one in in the last minute via a defender's toe to give Marconi a welcome three points, and in Scotland Hibs continued on their way to Scottish Cup glory with a last minute winner at Kilmarnock (for the uninitiated, that's where Johnny Walker lives).

Maybe its just a case of the old 'primary and recency' thinggo, which makes those late goals stay in my mind, but football these days does seem to be a last minute thing .....the days of leaving 5 minutes before full time to get a drink in are long gone....

Also, I would like to state that while I do not consider myself a stupid person (ok, we're all entitled to our own opinion) I admit that after viewing television recently I have given up on trying to work out exactly when a person is onside or offside because of this "passive offside" thing.

It is just beyond my comprehension that a consistent ruling can apply - and commentators who profess otherwise are plain wankers - it seems its just up to the ref to make it up on the night.

And while on the subject of wankers, Matthew Breeze did a couple of strange things last night.

He 'saw' a hand ball from Archie which nobody else in the ground did, and he failed to see a trip on the same player.

These incidents contributed to Archie being given an early bath.

Pride's resident Quasimodo, Dean Fak, had, it must be said, a solid game and a blind man who was at the game thought that, by the Pride players' comments, that he muse be some kind of Maradona.

Why, everytime Pride were under pressure he would hear someone in the Pride defence encourage his team mate to "just kick it to Fak"...........

Mr Katz did play most of the game, but unfortunatley did not make an erse of himself this time...