Tonight, in front of the best home attendance of the season, against the league's worst attacking side - a side missing its most dangerous striker, a side with no future in the national competition - Wollongong Wolves, who a week earlier had rolled the league leaders, only just managed a draw.
And it was not an attractive game. Knights had the ball down Wolves-end quite often but never threatened Wolves' injured keeper Andrew Crews. Wolves had three decent chances in play and wasted them, but otherwise showed no propensity to attack. They were lucky to be awarded the penalty that put them in the lead. Kris Trajanovski's equaliser was one of the few footballing bright spots. Another point of interest was the battle between Wolves' Jason van Blerk and Knights' Rodrigo Vargas.
The game started with a strong, cool northerly breeze. The pitch looked fine, though a little frayed at the northern end.
The guy sitting across from my cans of Tooheys, thinking this would be Melbourne Knights last game at Win Stadium, said, "And it's good Knights from Wollongong". He was expecting a 3-0 win.
A local journo was less optimistic: "We've done it against the top teams; now we have to do it against teams like this."
van Blerk began on the left, in place of Stewart van Bentum, whose appearances for Wolves coincided with their seven-match unbeaten run.
Wolves' first shot came after Nahuel Arrarte was tripped outside the right corner of the Knights' box. Stuart Young kicked to the near post where Tommi Tomich collected easily.
van Blerk juggled his way through a few players in midfield but couldn't evade the combined efforts of Stanko Zilic and Rodrigo Vargas.
A lofted long ball from Bobby Dragas was headed away for a corner by Antun Kovacic. A backward header by van Blerk caused trouble for the Knights defence, with Tomich finally regathering near the edge of the area.
Andrew Vargas outpaced Ben Blake on the right and got in a low cross, past the goal to Daniel Vasilevski who won a corner, the first of several.
Michael Hawrysiuk crossed from the right, but such high balls were no good for Chimaobi Nwaogazi against the height of Steve Pantelidis and Adrian Leijer. 'Chima' was not going to find it easy to equal the NSL record of scoring in seven consecutive games.
van Blerk, urgent in his talking as well as his play, twice called for the ball and got it and won a corner on the left. Arrarte took it and Adam Hughes missed a sitter with a free header at the far post. Didn't even have to jump for it.
Peter Buljan, in his first full game after injury, had a good run at goal and felt poorly done by when he fell under pressure from Blake. Buljan soon had a half shot on the turn from outside the Wolves penalty area.
Arrarte set up van Blerk who shot first time, left foot and way high.
van Blerk then applied pressure ending with a good tackle on Rodrigo Vargas. Minutes later van Blerk beat Vargas again.
On a Wollongong free kick from half way Nwaogazi almost succeeded in shielding the ball before turning to shoot from the edge of the area. But he couldn't keep his balance, perhaps due to the vigorous defending.
Daniel Cummins, whose performance was patchy at best, was good getting around Trajanovski. He then lost to Andrew Vargas.
Bill Natsioulas rounded Shane Lyons and crossed to Trajanovski who handled the ball.
On another Knights corner Rodrigo Vargas got up over Cummins and won a corner off his back. Andrew Vargas took the kick and Blake headed clear.
With a great tackle against Andrew Vargas, van Blerk won possession and launched Lyons down the left. Lyons was fouled by Rodrigo Vargas.
van Blerk and Young combined but Young was fouled by Zilic.
Arrarte looked for van Blerk's head in the Knights' area but the ball was too long for van Blerk to find decent purchase.
Young played to Arrarte but Arrarte was fouled by Andrew Vargas. As my brother-in-law said after the game, Wolves were out-muscled, out-thought and shut down in the middle.
The guy next to me said there was no challenge coming from the Wollongong strikers - mainly because they were getting no service. The only challenge was coming from van Blerk. As soon as he'd said that van Blerk sent Lyons down the left sideline but Lyons' cross - like most of Wolves - crosses tonight - was too long.
Cummins couldn't beat Vasilevski but bothered him enough to force his shot into the side netting.
Arrarte got Young away on the right and Young was content to win a throw for Hawrysiuk. From the long throw into the box Nwaogazi couldn't quite make contact with his head, again because of pressure on his back.
van Blerk won the ball again and got it to Young who immediately lost it. They guy next to me said, "He sucks tonight." Which was a bit harsh. Perhaps we could say his performance was indifferent.
Young got the ball in the Knights' box but had his back to the goal and Pantelidis and Rodrigo Vargas saw him away.
van Blerk hit a darling of a ball to Young who slipped it through to Hawrysiuk who was closed down before he could line up one of his blasters.
Nwaogazi crossed from the line, but only to Tomich.
In the 39th minute Vasilevski stopped Hawrysiuk after a good build up into the Knights' box that was started by van Blerk sacrificing himself on the left.
Nwaogazi, usually grinning whatever happens to him, was beginning to express some frustration at the attention he was getting from Pantelidis.
But the "fight of the night", according to the guy next to me, was Van Blerk v Vargas.
Pantelidis gave away a corner with Nwaogazi closing in.
In time added on an Arrarte corner was glanced wide.
Then Arrarte had to beat three players to cross from the left. He succeeded. But no-one was in place to help him.
The first half ended with Rodrigo Vargas complaining that van Blerk was getting away with too much. Something like, "How come I have a yellow card and he doesn't!" He must have been still bitter from an incident where Van Blerk had beaten him, Vargas had fallen and tangled with van Blerk's legs, grabbed onto one, after which van Blerk 'fell' onto Vargas, his knee driving into Vargas' inner thigh.
I usually think Vargas is okay; but he was out of his league tonight.
The second half began with my boy, to my other side, saying Nwaogazi still looked clumsy.
Kovacic put a header wide of goal.
A good switch went to Lyons who fed van Blerk who won Wolves a corner that Arrarte dropped harmlessly over the huddle in front of goal.
In the 49th minute van Blerk headed a Knights goal kick down to Arrarte who pushed the ball through to Nwaogazi. The Nigerian seemed to be covered but he found enough pace to get into the Knights' penalty area where he fell while leaping Pantelidis' leg and won Wolves a spot kick. My family informants right behind the goal said the incident was very dodgy and that the Knights players were justified in their protests.
This might have been Nwaogazi's chance to equal the record, but Young, sensibly, wanted to make sure of the goal and took the penalty himself. Wolves were ahead. But their real hope was that Knights would throw in the towel and stop putting up such good resistance.
Cummins copped a yellow card for the clumsiest of tackles and Knights scored with a header from the free kick but it was disallowed because two players were offside.
The guy next to me laughed when van Blerk won a free kick against Vargas. He has him in his pocket, "he said. He went on to explain how we needed more experienced overseas players, like van Blerk, to return to Australia to finish their careers here.
Arrarte shot on target and Tomich saved.
Knights applied more pressure and won another corner. Pantelidis had a wild shot high over the goal.
Hughes and van Blerk worked the ball across the pitch and back again and finally to Cummins whose cross was far too hard. But then Cummins was good against Knights' substitute Tomi Razov.
Nwaogazi, free on the right, hit a nothing cross to Tomich.
Andrew Vargas beat a couple of players in a good run to goal but van Blerk cut in from the left and robbed him.
In the 66th minute Trajanovski scored with a neat header at the undefended far post on a Vasilevski cross from the line at the right. Perfect. Lovely to watch. Apart from the terrible marking.
Wollongong then pushed the ball around for a while until Cummins hit a rubbish cross.
Nwaogazi won a corner on a long throw from Hawrysiuk. Wolves won the ball but the header went straight to Tomich.
Cummins had a good moment, and with some persistence won Wolves a corner. But he was immediately replaced by Jacob Timpano who soon had a shot that also went straight to Tomich. But this was a good sign for Wolves. This substitution - in fact all the substitutions - injected some freshness and created danger for Knights.
Timpano, like Cummins, is suspect in the right back position. But Timpano showed enthusiasm moving forward and brought Wolves to life. When Hawrysiuk went off, Timpano was ably aided and abetted by Wolves other young Aussie star Dustin Wells.
There was a glimmer of excitement when a flick-on by Nwaogazi almost found Young in the Knights box, and then when Dragas headed a corner from the right onto the roof of the net, but everything was coming from Timpano and Wells.
Wells made a run down the right that created space for Timpano to run at goal.
Then Wells hit a cross for Nwaogazi waiting at the far post, but it drifted so close to goal that Tomich had to save by pushing it over the crossbar. van Blerk shot wide.
Wells fed Young who also tried to find Nwaogazi at the far post; but this time Chima was doing a bit of ball watching and didn't make his move. Young wasn't the only one to be frustrated by the local hero's tendency to go AWOL occasionally. Earlier Arrarte had put a beautiful ball in from the right, into space and onto the penalty spot, but Chima remained on the other side of the box keeping a defender company.
Something had to be done to increase the strike force. Tanju Balabanel was to come on. But would it be at the expense of a defender or another striker? A striker was to go and, oddly, it wasn't Nwaogazi. Was this a bit of romance on the coach's part, giving Chima a chance at the record? Not really. John Turner reckoned that Nwaogazi was attracting a lot of defensive attention. He figured that if he took Chima off that attention would be redirected to Balabanel; but if he took Young off Balabanel would be allowed to run relatively free. So that's what Turner did. And that's pretty well how it turned out.
Balabanel did make some good runs and Wells and Balabanel worked well to win a corner. But Wolves delivery in the final third remained woeful.
And then Wells went brain dead. First foul throwing a throw in (throw the ball from behind your head, Dustin). And then horribly miskicking a good chance in front of goal. As Turner later said, he could at least have got it on target.
The Wolves camp tried to talk up the draw: Now it was eight games undefeated. Turner thought Wolves would have done better if Knights had been more attacking. He ruefully observed that they came for a point and got their point.
Turner was very disappointed. He said there was an element of complacency in his team which he had feared all week. "You can't afford to do that in this league, not with anyone, or they will punish you for it."
Knights coach Ian Dobson said he thought it was an even game. "I thought we played really well for half an hour in the first half. And Wollongong came on top of us in the last 15 minutes. And we gave a very, very sloppy goal away; but the boys showed a lot of courage and came back well."
Of Wolves' complacency, Turner said, "If you'd seen the team at Bob Jane last week and the team on the park tonight, they were two different sides."He blamed the Knights goal on Wolves' naivety. Two defenders went to the Knights player who passed to Vasilevski. Turner said the ball should have been cut off before it got to the back stick.
The worst thing that happened to Wolves, he said, was the half time whistle. Before that Wolves were going quite well.
He said Dragas, Hughes and Wells should have scored. It was a shocking miss, "he said of Wells' effort. He said Wells could have had a second touch and made sure of his shot. That's what the game is about: scoring goals, not missing goals."
He said, "We learned from our losses earlier this season; maybe we can learn from this draw & I'm just disappointed we are not performing here at home. That annoys me."
Dobson said part of the game plan was to mark Nwaogazi and Young tightly. He said he had seen Chima last year and that Turner had done a great job with him: "I saw him when he was playing with Faulkner in the Victorian Premier League and didn't rate him too highly. But he's obviously come on and scored goals. But we did our job defensively and I was pleased with that."
On the battle between Vargas and van Blerk he said Knights had changed their system a little bit to cope with Wollongong and that Vargas and Van Blerk were good competitors. He said he thought the referee did van Blerk some favours and was one-sided against Vargas. But he said Vargas showed a lot of discipline and didn't get himself red-carded and that was important.
Turner said his side was struggling with injuries. Crews had a groin injury that was so bad he had signalled he might need to come off but Turner forced him to stay on. Lyons and Hawrysiuk were injured, but at least they were treatable injuries, he said. And he said van Blerk tired towards the end: I think it's been a "welcome to our summer", the last few days. I think he felt it in the last half an hour. I think in the first half he was really mixing it, really dominating out there & I had to keep him out there to keep directing traffic if nothing else."
At the club presentation afterwards Turner gave his man of the match decision to Chima "who created the penalty".
Dobson said this was one of the few times this season he had started to get a squad together. We have had a horrific run of injuries, and I'm talking long-term injuries & so I've got a squad available who can compete. I know we can compete. Its just having the players available. We still have Andre Marth and Henry Fa'Arodo still off. When they start coming back, and Daniel Rocco - they've missed half the season, those boys & we're going from strength to strength squad-wise."
He said there was never any doubt as far as he was concerned that Knights were committed to competing for the rest of the season. He said the players were a very committed young squad. They've got nothing to gain by throwing the towel in this early. As far as I'm concerned there are ten games to go and we'll be trying to pick up as many points as possible."