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RECORD CROWD FOR AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL
Saturday December 9th, 2006
The biggest crowd ever to witness a domestic game of football in Australia of 50,333 were left disappointed when the score line was left untouched at 0-0 between Melbourne Victory FC and Sydney FC. It was a game that promised so much during the week but delivered very little in terms of goals. The Melbourne and Sydney rivalry has always produced goals, but tonight at Telstra Dome it was unable to live up to it’s full potential.
Terry Butcher has to be congratulated for a game plan that held the Victory to very few chances from the 1st whistle and the Sydney players responded to their coaches instructions with a disciplined performance. That frustrated Victory and didn’t allow the home side their fast running attacking game.
There was a standout however, in Archie Thompson who continually tried to run at the Sydney defence and carve out an opening for his team-mates. Another stand out was that of Kevin Muscat, but in a negative way. Questions had to be asked about the fitness of the skipper as he had a huge lack of influence on this game. Kevin Muscat at the press conference stated “I was not carrying an injury, it was just one of those games where I had a defensive responsibility”.
From the very beginning you could see that Sydney if anything were on the defensive side of things as Butcher elected to use just one striker and not risk any early goals that would have probably ended any Sydney comeback as the Victory were one man off a full back four with Daniel Piorkowski still on the sidelines due to injury.
And with both sides on the defensive side of things it lead to a lack of chances throughout the game.
Sydney had the best chance is the first half when Carney got onto a superb cross from Robbie Middleby in the 11th minute, however his attempted header went flying over the cross bar.
Archie Thompson produced the best chance down the other end for Melbourne with some brilliant foot work inside the area on the death of half time. As he has done many a time this season, he was able to full two of his opponents and ended up having a shot at goal from 12 yards with no pressure applied. However as the ball did all night, went flying over the cross bar and 0-0 was our score at half time.
The same had to be said for the second half. The defence of both sides well out in front of any attack and it lead for coaches Ernie Merrick and Terry Butcher to fix the problem and try to excite the quickly softening crowd.
Ernie Merrick drew first blood on the sidelines when he introduced Adrian Caceres after saw no need for Allesandro to be out on the park any longer.
Terry Butcher made a surprise move when he took off David Carney for Alex Brosque. A midfielder for a striker gave the hint to the public that Sydney’s goal of the night was to keep a clean sheet.
However they did the job at the end of the night when at the end of 90 minutes when 0-0 was the end score.
Butcher admitted it was a flat game for such a big occasion but after two heavy losses to Melbourne we needed to be defensibly minded to repeat any losses of the past. He went on to give his compliments to the Melbourne public and stated the A-League is up there in crowds with the best leagues in t he world and even though its rising in standard, it’s still not up their with the best standard wise.
Merrick was asked about Brebner, if his presence would have made a bigger impact. “You always miss a player which has the calibre of Brebner but we have enough depth to cover that absence”. Merrick went on to say that they were happy with the result but would have liked to score a goal in front of this great crowd.
Finally, both captains stated that football was the winner tonight was football and that this day will go down in history as one to celebrate.
Next week Melbourne go down in class when they stay in Melbourne to tackle the forever struggling New Zealand knights as Sydney FC fly back to home soil to host to Pert Glory.
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