I often wonder what attracts fans..... is it the entertainment or the quality. Its probably a mixture of both.
In truth this match was not the highest quality of football match. Wollongongs defence is little short of abysmal and Souths shooting & passing is really quite poor for a national league side - never mind one at the top of the league.
But entertainment value 10 out of 10 !!!!!!!
It was superb to watch. A match that had everything. 5 goals, three disallowed goals, a missed penalty, countless missed sitters, great saves, controversy, the lot. Im not familiar with the Wolves players names so wont try to write any kind of report. But the facts were... Wolves took an early lead after scoring direct from a free kick. Souths keeper Galekovic lined up his wall pitifully and scoring was a simple task. South then had two goals disallowed in just a couple of minutes. The first when a boutsianis freekick was punched in by someone - Coveny I think but i wasnt sure. The yellow card came out but it wasnt clear who was booked. The second was much more controversial. South won a penalty for handball which Coveny ruthlessly despatched only to find it had to be retaken as THREE South players had encroached into the area. Frankly I was pleased that it was penalised as i noticed that this happened with both penalties a fortnight ago v Power. In this case I think that Michael Curcija & Con Boutsianis were in front of Coveny when he took the penalty! Coveny opted for the thump it down the middle style for his second attempt and it was duly punched over for a corner by the excellent Wolves keeper (Andrew Crews I think). From then on South completely outplayed Wolves and missed sitter after sitter. Half time came with the score at 0-1 still. The second half continued as the first had with a steady stream towards the Wolves goal but Boutsianis's (particularly) finishing was woeful. And i do mean woeful. He was missing sitters you would expect 10 yearolds to score. Eventually an equaliser had to come and it did. A Coveny header looped goalward and Crews & Wolves defender Dragas(?) got in each others rod. Boutsianis was in there as well but it didnt seem to me (or others around me)that he actually touched the ball. He claimed it though. Either way it dribbled into the net for 1-1. About 10 mins later Nwaogazi put Wolves back in front with a thumping half volley and I must admit that I thought that would be it ....but not by half!!!! Coveny scored with a screamer of a header from a corner (2-2) and then South missed a couple more sitters before substitute Balabanel broke away and scored with a soft shot which even now I have no idea how it found its way past Galekovic. Horrendous goalkeeping.
After 95 minutes Wolves scored a 4th which was cruely disallowed because the referee hadnt signalled for the free kick to be taken. Frankly I hadnt noticed that he had asked Wolves to wait but I do recall at least twice earlier in the match he HAD signalled that the whistle must blow before free kicks could be taken.
South had Massimo Murdocca back in midfield and looked altogether a far better and more complete team. He & Coveny were running the show for them. I also thought Sam Poutakidis was good. He strikes me as a limited player but is getting better and more confident every time i see him. For Wolves Shane Lyons was excellent as was Crews but no -one else really stood out. I was watching Nwaogazi with interest and he is an interesting player. Seems to win a lot of high balls that he shouldnt and is obviously highly skilled, yet he seems to lose balance easily. He falls over regularly.
The referee whom I dont recall seeing before was excellent. He made some very tough decisions and made them correctly which resulted in a lot of jeering from the parochial BJS crowd. Not many refs can say they disallowed 2 goals in lessthan 5 minutes by the league leaders who were playing at home and were a goal down.
excellent fare i have to say. Well worth the 20 bucks admission. Didnt see Seb...perhaps he was still reading his book or maybe he went to the beach with the your lass.....