Jets Down Roar At Ballymore

Brisbane Roar suffered a 1:2 defeat at Ballymore Stadium this afternoon at the hands of the Newcastle Jets. The Jets grabbed their win with a second half penalty to Ljubo Milicevic. The Jets had earlier taken the lead just eight minutes into the match when Jason Hoffman finished off a counter attacking move. The Roar equalised just prior to the break when Sergio Van Dijk whipped in a curling effort from just outside the box to finish off a nice passage of play. The Roar were unlucky not to have been ahead at the break with Mitch Nichols denied by an outstanding save from Ben Kennedy and Van Dijk volleying over earlier in the half.

The second half took a shock twist when after failing to clear their lines Robbie Kruse was shown a red card for handling a goal bound shot. Milicevic fired home from the spot and the Roar had to try and find an equaliser while playing with a man down. Despite some enterprising play after the introduction of Isaka Cernak, Adam Sarota and Luke Brattan the Roar came up just short, though Kennedy was forced into another great save along the way.

Despite welcoming back Andrew Packer into the starting line up the Roar were again understrength for this match. Missing were Danny Tiatto, Josh McCloughan, Charlie Miller, Michael Zullo, David Dodd, Tommy Oar, Reinaldo and Tim Smits. Bob Malcolm put in about a 60 minute shift alongside Matt McKay in the midfield. However it was a lacklustre performance from the big Scot who was clearly disappointed with his performance as he took his seat on the bench.

Again it was a less than satisfying performance from the Roar who just don't quite seem to be clicking at the moment. It's time for Frank to start cracking the whip a bit and getting some of this shit sorted out. Otherwise we might have a bit of a slow start to the season again. We're three weeks out from the start of the season so there is definitely still time to tidy things up a bit. But things won't be helped by a bunch of our youngsters jetting off with the Young Socceroos.

It's been a busy weekend of friendlies around the A-League with a bunch of clubs in action.

Gold Coast United have had a busy week that kicked off with a 1:1 draw with BPL side Rochedale Rovers. It seems the club and press down on the coast don't like to talk about games that they don't win so I can't provide any details about what happened there. I believe they also played Tweed Valley Kings during the week but I haven't even seen a score from that game. Last night they took on Central Coast Mariners who tossed away a win to draw 2:2. The Mariners were out to a 0:2 lead and had a man advantage with Michael Thwaite having been sent off. However they managed to choke and let in late goals to Adama Traore and Shane Smeltz.

Over in the west, Perth Glory edged out North Queensland Fury in a 1:0 win. Chris Coyne and Branko Jelic made their debuts for the Glory while Robbie Fowler made another appearance off the bench for the Fury. Jamie Harnwell scored the winner for the Glory but the night did not end well for the veteran after he was stretchered off with what is rumoured to be a serious hamstring injury.

Sydney FC edged out Sydney Olympic with Young Socceroo Kofi Danning scoring the winner in narrow 1:0 victory.

Wellington Phoenix had a two goal lead extinguished by Tianjin Teda in a 2:2 draw in China.

Roar Lads In For Argie Tour

Four Brisbane Roar players have made Jan Versleijin's 20 man squad for the upcoming Copa Ciudad de Rosario tournament in Argentina. Luke Devere, Isaka Cernak, Mitch Nichols and Luke Brattan have all earned a place in the squad while Tommy Oar has missed out due to injury. The squad will meet up in Sydney on Monday for a two day training camp before heading off on Wednesday where they will play matches against Uruguay and USA.

The full squad is

• Luke Brattan (Brisbane Roar Youth)
• Isaka Cernak (Brisbane Roar)
• Alex Cisak (Leicester City)
• Peter Cvetanovski (Borussia Munchengladbach)
• Kofi Danning (Sydney)
• Luke Devere (Brisbane Roar)
• Nathan Elasi (Melbourne Victory)
• Antony Golec (Sydney)
• Jason Hoffman (Newcastle Jets)
• Matthew Jurman (Sydney)
• Osama Malik (North Queensland Fury)
• Tahj Minniecon (Gold Coast United)
• Aaron Mooy (Bolton Wanderers)
• Sam Munro (Sydney Youth)
• Jason Naidovski (Newcastle Jets)
• Mitch Nichols (Brisbane Roar)
• Chris Payne (Sydney)
• Andrew Redmayne (Central Coast Mariners)
• Nikola Stanojevic (AIS)
• Rocco Visconte (Hearts)

It appears that the FFA has won it's battle with Gold Coast United over Tahj Minniecon's availability for this tour. However they may be some question mark over his attendance still as he is currently recovering from swine flu.

Swine Flu Hits A-League

A couple of stories have hit the Internet late today regarding cases of swine flu at A-League clubs. Gold Coast United was the first to be reported. Youth marquee Tahj Minniecon has been confirmed with the H1N1 virus while four other players have shown flu like symptoms and have been isolated. Adam Griffiths, Joel Porter, Daniel Piorkowski and Matt Osman. At this stage the Gold Coast have not seen any evidence of symptoms in other players but obviously would be heavily monitoring their players. Gold Coast are due to play Central Coast Mariners this weekend and at this stage there is no talk of calling the game off.

The virus has also struck down in Adelaide with new striker Lloyd Owusu falling victim to it and a dose of pneumonia.

Not good news at all, and hopefully we don't see this spreading any more.

God Arrives, Glory Crash

North Queensland Fury went into tonight's clash with Wolverhampton Wanderers on the back of three interesting news stories. First was the news that they had secured former Roar striker David Williams on a one year loan deal from his Danish club Brondby. The striker come winger had been on the outer and had sort a move to get his career back on track. With Williams arriving the news also broke that Brendan Santalab was heading to China for a trial with Chengdu Blades. But the news I'm sure warmed the hearts of all Fury fans was that marquee signing Robbie Fowler would finally make his debut for the club. Having worked through hip and groin injuries that have hampered his pre-season, Fowler's appearance amongst the reserves was a welcome sight for the club's fans.

As in their match against Perth Glory, Wolves proved quite the fast starters with Andy Keogh grabbing a second minute goal. The Fury weren't deterred by conceding a goal and created a number of first half chances themselves. The introduction of Williams and Fowler for the last 35 minutes helped lift Fury and when Jeremy Brockie was felled in the box the chance arose for Fowler to grab a debut goal. He did not disappoint and calmly put away the penalty to square the ledger. Wolves were not to be denied though and Jody Craddock headed home a match winning goal in the 74th minute.

A 1:2 loss was not a bad result for the Fury and having endured a horror start to their pre-season things are now starting to look on the up. The fortunes seem to have turned a bit since the win over Adelaide and this competitive performance against Wolves will give them much heart. So too will the arrival of the lively young Williams, but nothing will compare to the boost of finally having Robbie Fowler grab some much needed minutes and a goal to boot.

Tonight's second match ended badly for the hosts Perth Glory who found themselves on the wrong end of 0:5 scoreline. Fulham took the lead afte fifteen minutes when Andrew Johnson netted and this scoreline held until past the hour mark. Then it became the Erik Nevland show with the Norwegian striker grabbing a hat trick in seven minutes to blow the score out to 0:4. Things went from bad to worse for the Glory when Andranik added a fifth late in the match to complete the rout.

So with that result we see the conclusion of a very interesting phase of pre-season with a host of our clubs playing good European competition. Just to recap on the results over the last week or so we had

Gold Coast United 2 (Milson, Smeltz) - Fulham 1 (D. Murphy)

Perth Glory 0 - Wolverhampton Wanderers (1) (S. Ebanks-Blake)

Melbourne Victory 0 - Fulham 3 (A. Johnson pen, E. Johnson, E. Nevland)

Brisbane Roar 0 - Celtic 3 (C. Killen 2, K. Mizuno)

North Queensland Fury 1 (R. Fowler pen) - Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 (A. Keogh, J. Craddock)

Perth Glory 0 - Fulham 5 (A. Johnson, E. Nevland 3, Andranik)

Over all it was a very good experience and gave us a chance to see how our sides shaped up against much higher profile teams. Generally I thought the A-League teams did pretty well with Gold Coast's nicking a win against Fulham probably the most notable result.

The best news is that the wheels may already be in motion to do it all again next year. Word on the street is that the organisers of the Roar Against Racism game have already been approached by a top European club to take on the Roar in next year's game. That can only be good news and suggests that we can look forward to more of this in the future.

My big beef out of all this however is the lack of television coverage. It would have been great to watch all the games and see more clearly just how the A-League teams fared rather than having to rely on the distinctly second rate written reports. Hopefully next year they will be able to sell off the television rights to these games so that we can watch them all.

Well it was fun while it lasted, but it's time to focus on the A-League again now. The Roar take on Newcastle at Ballymore this Sunday so I'll head along to that to see how we fare. On the subject of the Jets it seems that someone forgot to bolt the door to the departure lounge again. It seems their captain, Matt Thompson, has headed to China to trial with Chengchun Yatai. Ironically if he wins a contract it will be to replace the Roar's Matt McKay who has returned home after a successful loan spell.

Roar Versus Celtic Highlights

Well the coverage of these pre-season games has been horribly piss poor but I've manage to dig up a few highlights packages from the day.

Here's a look at Celtic's goals, all three are pretty sharp and not bad stuff for a team just back into pre-season. I guess it just goes to show that if you put Celtic in front of 20,000 of their fans you are always going to get a strong performance.

And just to prove the Roar weren't total rubbish as some in the media have sadly portrayed, here are some highlights of the pressure that we put them under. There was more of that in the second half too, but unfortunately I haven't been able to turn any of that up.

There has been something of a sad footnote to the match with the news overnight that former Celtic striker John Hartson diagnosed with Cancer. Like Roar captain Craig Moore, Hartson has testicular cancer. Unfortunately though his cancer has also spread and has made it to his brain. So all the best to John as he undergoes treatment.

Clubs Need To Respect National Teams

Over the last week I've been somewhat disappointed to read a number of articles about Gold Coast coach Miron Bleiberg wanting to hold Tahj Minniecon back from the Young Socceroos' next overseas trip. Unfortunately the upcoming tour of South America is not on FIFA dates and with the players set to arrive home just days before the opening matches of the new A-League season and Bleiberg has decided that his clubs' needs come first and he will exercise his right not to release the player.

The whole club versus country debate is always a touchy one and it is one where it is easy to see both sides of the argument. We have seen it time and time again over the last decade as the Socceroos have fought with European clubs to get our best players back for national team games. Over the last couple of years we have seen this situation start to improve and although it still tests the patience of the clubs we seem to be having less trouble getting our players away from their clubs. Sadly now it seems this problem is creeping into the local scene with A-League clubs starting to push back on the call of our national teams. Most disturbingly it is the Young Socceroos who are suffering most. Last season we saw then Sydney coach John Kosmina refuse to release some of his young players to a national team call up and now the Gold Coast appear to be the next to test the FFA's patience.

Bleiberg's focus is clearly on the August 8 clash with the Roar and I think he is being somewhat guilty of putting his own agenda well ahead of that of a player and the relevant national team. Bleiberg is adamant that Minniecon is one of his key players and he needs him fresh for the opening round derby. Bleiberg believes that taking the players to South America is a waste of time and they should stay at home and just play the likes of Central Coast and Sydney. Not for the first time Bleiberg has totally missed the point.

The FFA is going to great pains to prepare our Young Socceroos for the upcoming Youth World Cup. They recently toured Europe playing two tournaments as Jan Versleijin spent valuable time working with his players. But just as importantly that trip gave them significant exposure to the way European football teams play. Likewise the South American tour is designed to give the players further opportunity to work together, but also to have the chance to gain better experience playing against South American teams. This is vital as our draw at the World Cup sees us taking on Brazil, Costa Rica and the Czech Republic. The whole value proposition of these two tours has been the chance to gain greater experience in the styles of South American and European teams which our young players have rarely had the chance to take on because that is what we will have to face at the World Cup. Playing the likes of Central Coast is not going to achieve that!

The reality is that a lot of clubs will be giving up their talented youngsters to this tour and facing exactly the same problems that Gold Coast are. In fact many will have it far harder than they will. The Roar, who Gold Coast play in the opening round, will be much harder hit with four players likely to make the tour. Luke Devere, Mitch Nichols and Isaka Cernak seem certain to make the tour and so too will Tommy Oar if he overcomes a thigh injury. That list could further increase if youth team player Luke Brattan continues to attract Verslaijin's attentions. These clubs seem to be playing along with the FFA's wishes and are releasing their players.

Personally I believe that Bleiberg has taken a massively short sighted stance on this issue. His only concern seems to be his ego trip against his former club and he wants every player on deck to support that. Little or no attention seems to be paid to what impact missing this tour will have one Minniecon's chance of making the squad that ultimately goes to Egypt for the World Cup. You know the old saying, never give a sucker an even break. By missing this tour Minniecon may ultimately be doing just that. Given half a chance another player may just step up and play his way into the World Cup squad at Minniecon's expense. If that happens then it would be a major blow for the lad who thus far has been a regular in squads.

No matter what level we are talking about it is essential that our domestic clubs show the national teams due respect. How can we justify requesting our European stars when even local clubs refuse to release players? A strong showing at the Youth World Cup is vital in the development of a group of players who are likely to ultimately form the core of the Socceroos at the 2018 World Cup which the FFA hopes to be hosting. The FFA has gone to major lengths to structure the A-League draw to accommodate the international calendar without harming the league itself. But it requires co-operation on both sides and the clubs have to realise that not everything will always go there way.

Bhoys Too Good For Roar

Scottish giants Celtic made their trip to Brisbane count with a convincing 3:0 win over the Brisbane Roar. With beautiful weather and a more than healthy crowd of 31,340 on hand, both sides put on an entertaining match with plenty on offer from both sides. Kiwi international Chris Killen was the star of the show with two goals while Japanese international Koki Mizuno grabbed the third.

Both managers opted for slightly surprising starting line ups. Farina predictably started with Reddy in goal and a back four of McCloughan, Moore, Devere and Mundy. Last year's youth team captain, Adam Sarota, got a start alongside Matt McKay in the centre of midfield and Henrique, Kruse and Nichols provided the support for Van Dijk who was deployed as the lone striker.

Tony Mowbray sprang a surprise by pairing Killen with Scott McDonald in what it seems was ultimately a master stroke. Paddy McCourt, Willo Flood, Marc Crosas and Shaun Maloney made up the midfield while the defence consisted of Lee Naylor, Gary Caldwell, Glenn Loovens and Andreas Hinkel and Artur Boruc in goal.

Having been treated to entertainment from a pipe and drum band, a celtic band, more bag pipes and a didgeridoo the two teams finally took to the field. The Roar were resplendent in their now home strip while Celtic wore their classic green and white hoops.

Celtic predictably got off to a slow start in their first hit out for the season and the Roar tried to make the most of this. Despite being the underdogs the locals looked to take the visitors and caused plenty of headaches in their opening stages of the match. The Roar's wingers, Kruse and Henrique, in particular were causing plenty of headaches for Celtic. But Celtic began to settle into the match as the half wore on and as they did you could start to see the difference in class emerge between the two sides. Liam Reddy was proving solid in goal and Robbie Kruse cleared a shot off the line to keep the scores level. But the Roar were starting to fail to complete some of their passes and this was giving Celtic the chance to put more pressure on the Roar defence.

Just when thought of going to the break with a scoreless draw on the board were entering my head Killen broke the deadlock. Naylor pushed forward in attack and whipped in a pinpoint cross which Killen headed home after getting between Moore and Devere. Thinking that 0:1 at the break would be OK I was quickly put in my place when Celtic quickly doubled their lead when Maloney set up Killen for his second. So Celtic went to the break with a two goal lead but to be honest I didn't feel like we had done that bad. Anyway it was time to sit back and watch a bit of multi cultural entertainment and wait for the second half.

Both coaches made changes at the break with Tony Mowbray bringing in Lukasz Zaluscka for Boruc and Koki Mizuno, Aiden McGeady and Georgios Samaras for McCourt, Maloney and Killen. Frank Farina added ex-Ranger Charlie Miller for Sarota. Celtic quickly made it 3:0 when some brilliant vision from Samaras found Hinkel in space on the right and the fullback whipped in a great cross which Mizuno met with a diving header to beat Reddy.

Right now I was starting to think that the scoreline might really blow out but the Roar buckled down and held it together. To their credit they kept pushing for a goal but just couldn't quite break open the Celtic defence. Henrique was putting on a really impressive show and the little winger proved that his lack of size is going to be no disadvantage this season. Time and again he squirmed past players and came out the other side with the ball. Both sides made changes as the match wore on with Mowbray finally resting Scott McDonald, who failed to find the back of the net while giving Liam Reddy plenty of catching practice. New signing Marc-Antoine Fortune made his first appearance after signing for Celtic when he replace McDonald, while Simon Ferry, Paul Caddis and Milan Misun also got runs. Frank Farina also worked his way through his bench with Bob Malcolm, Tim Smits, Luke Brattan and Daniel Bowles all getting a run. It was good to see youth team players Brattan and Bowles get a chance to have a run and the two youngsters didn't look to out of place with Bowles going close with a header from a late corner.

The Roar had a great chance for a consolation goal in the dying minutes of the game when the ball fell invitingly to Tim Smits. However the striker took too long to get his shot away and a desperate tackle from Loovens I think. Smits really should have put this one away and it was the time he took to shoot that showed the difference in quality of the two sides.

So the match finished and we had suffered a 0:3 loss and conceded the Translink Cup for the first time.

All up though it was a pretty good effort from the Roar. Celtic are a class side and proved it today with this win. But our lads, who were without first team regulars Massimo Murdocca, Danny Tiatto, Andrew Packer and Michael Zullo, didn't look out of place. We've seen A-League sides get far worse beatings by lesser sides in the ACL so at the end of the day I'm reasonably happy with the performance. We can improve a bit all over the park yet and we still definitely need to get sharper in attack. But at the end of the day we are going to be a tough proposition for A-League teams on the back of this performance.

Henrique was my standout for the Roar but I also thought Nichols and Kruse did pretty well too. Kruse was a real handful in the first 30 minutes but he did seem to fade out of the game a bit after that.

Craig Moore proved that there is still plenty of blue Rangers blood in veins with a couple elbows thrown in against Natlor and Samaras. It was a bit of an eye opener really but I guess when Moorey sees a bit of green and white he still can't help himself.

So all up it was a good day out. It was fantastic to see a side like Celtic in action and even better to watch them play my home team. Our lads did a good job and look to be building reasonably well for the upcoming season. It's not often I can say I'm happy about this sort of scoreline, but today I can certainly say I'm satisfied if nothing else.