In February South played 9 games. That’s not a typo, that’s just part of our early season insanity. The fixture sandwich roughly saw us play our three OPL games in Port Moresby to kick off the month, followed by three NPL games, and then three OPL games in Melbourne to round out February.

Port Moresby

The Port Moresby fixtures saw us bank 5 points out of nine as we saw the team wobble against mid-table OPL opposition. Although the entertaining 3-3 draw with South Island and the dominating 5-2 win against Vanuatu United were probably about par for the course, it was the 1-1 draw with Bula that attracted some attention. The result was an upset of sorts, it was a game we were expected to win but one where we looked essentially toothless up front, requiring a free kick goal from Andrew Mesourouni to pinch a point. The Port Moseby games were certainly a tough OFC lesson with the spongy surface in humid and hot conditions certainly tough for the boys to manage.

Even considering the above though, the Port Moresby games underlines something many of us already knew. The OPL wasn’t going to be a cake walk, and although we had blown away lower quality opposition to buff out our goal difference we probably need a little more quality up front to dominate the league and break down stubborn defences in tough conditions. Encouragingly when the goals do come they appear to be coming from multiple sources. We had  five separate goal scorers across our Port Moresby games. I don’t think there was too much to tweak based on these games, but especially from the Bula game I would like to see someone able to get more dangerous shots away rather than us patiently hold, and ultimately waster forward possession.

South Island 3-3 draw. Uchida, Mikkola, Swibel.

Bula 1-1 draw. Mesourouni.

Vanuatu United 5-2 win. Inglese, Uchida, Swibel x2 Mesourouni.

NPL Kicks off

I was actually able to attend the Avondale game which was nice, what was nicer was seeing us field essentially a full strength squad. I underestimated our staff’s appetite to play players with tight turnarounds, and as long as the players can handle it, I’m glad we are still taking the early part of the NPL seriously, even with OPL commitments. We looked sharper than Avondale from the get go – who quite frankly looked a mess. Avondale were a shadow of their former selves lacking attacking fluidity and seemingly unable to manage their huge player turnover for the round 1 clash. Mikkola scored a rocket to give us the lead and we went on to dominate the second half with Giannakopoulos scoring our second to seal the win.

The following two games however saw significantly more rotation. In our round two game against Hume, we conceded early and were unable to catch our hungry opposition despite a late goal from Singh. It was a disappointing home result in front of a small Lakeside crowd, and it did set off alarm bells for some of our famously sensitive fans. Although some off-field questions remain from the fixture (crowd size, fixture timing) the on-field questions were answered quite quickly in the next fixture. Again using a rotated squad we managed to defeat Altona 2-1 to quickly find ourselves back on the winners list. A Bonada master class got us over the line however a red card to Altona and some desperate defending certainly helped. I know it wasn’t pretty but it was a hugely important result because it showed me that the team can grind our results even with heavy rotations. A shred of hope as we manage our overlapping competitions through to May.

Avondale 2-0 win. Mikkola and Giannakopoulos.

Hune 1-2 loss. Singh.

Altona 2-1 win. Bonada.

There’s no place like home (of the Matildas)

The Grand Prix meant that we were unfortunately not able to host the OFC Melbourne circuit at Lakeside. Instead we played our games at the Olympic Village and the Home of the Matildas. I’ll come out and say it, sure this is a little embarrassing for all involved – but I genuinely think its most embarrassing for the State Government. How the city doesn’t have a centrally located second tier football stadium I can’t understand (I mean of course I can, it’s the AFL) but this has been a persistent issue for a while now. Lakeside is great – don’t get me wrong but Football Victoria shouldn’t have to play Grand Finals at an Athletics track, similarly even though the stadium looked great on the night (I was there) the Australia Cup final should also not have been played at an athletics track. The alternative venues – although they got the job done – let’s be real are not located in good spots. The Village needs a lot of love to say the least and the Home of the Matildas is a glorified training venue.

Anyway back to the games. Against Auckland we faced our toughest OPL opposition yet and besides a wonderous solo goal from them we matched them and eked out a draw at the death thanks to an Eliopoulos header from a corner. It was a good barometer of where we are at and what will be required if we want to win this thing. Our following game against Tahiti was postponed… just our luck! Two postponed games in a continental league was not on anyone’s bingo card this season and certainly have caused many headaches of administrators. Apparently we tried to get the game played at 11am the following day but were shot down in our efforts. We now face an additional catch up game – likely in Fiji, which will significantly challenge our player rotation plans in April.

The final two Melbourne circuit games were walkovers. A 4-1 win against South Island and a 5-0 win against the Solomon Kings was party us playing well and enjoying the home advantage, but mostly seemed like our opposition failing to manage the conditions and travel. Both teams imploded with the Kings notably losing their keeper to an unnecessary red card. Strange, strange, strange!

Auckland 1-1 draw. Eliopoulos.

Tahiti Postponed

South Island Untied 4-1 win. Uchida, Jankovic, Lackay, Swibel.

Solomon Kings 5-0 win. Uchida, Mikkola, Lampard, Bonada, Cocks.

Big month

Overall I’m not sure you could ask for any more. Results wise the team got a nearly perfect score. Player rotations have been more aggressive and seemingly more successful than I anticipated. Although we are already half way through March, the February games gave me a bit to be positive about. That said, they also exhausted me to keep on top of – and I only managed to attend one game! I’m already looking forward to the second half of the year when we are only contesting one competition!