Roar March On To 30

Thirty matches unbeaten has a lovely ring to it and Brisbane Roar are celebrating just that tonight.  Despite intense pressure from Sydney FC, Roar once again proved that they are a side that can finish over the top of anyone in the league.  With many pundits proposing that pressuring Roar was the way to beat them Sydney tried just that approach and failed to pull it off.  Their big downfall was the inability, despite their best efforts, to deliver the kill blow in the final third.

Berisha celebrates opening his account for Roar

While Brisbane went into the match with an unchanged line up, Sydney made a couple of minor changes.  Bruno Cazarine replaced the suspended Mark Bridge and Karol Kisel came into the midfield.  Brett Emerton switched over to the left of midfield to accommodate Kisel which earned the ire of many pundits.

As I said, Sydney came out of the blocks hard and really tried to pressurise Brisbane.  It certainly made life tough for the Roar but Sydney all too often were caught offside at the crucial moment and failed to deliver a telling blow to Roar.  They paid the price late in the first half when Albanian import Besart Berisha showed superb poacher's instincts to pounce on spilled ball from Liam Reddy as he dived to save a strong shot from Erik Paartalu.  Sydney had played valiantly in the first half but had to settle with a one goal deficit at the break.  The second half saw Roar settle more into the game and their superior fitness once again proved telling, as did their ability to bring players off the bench who could make a decisive contribution.  This time it was for Sydney winger Kofi Danning who burst into space on the right before cutting the ball back through the box for Thomas Broich who blasted his shot past Reddy.  Two to the good and Roar never looked like being headed from that point.

In all honesty this wasn't exactly a great performance from Roar, but once again they got the job done. Sydney showed that they could put the pressure on Brisbane, but ultimately the visitors were able to adjust and solve the problem. Nick Carle and Terry Antonis were good for Sydney but just failed to be able to bust Roar open. Berisha was excellent for Roar putting in a hard working ninety minutes and scoring his first goal. Nakajima-Farran was disappointing tonight but Danning proved an excellent impact player off the bench. Another plus for Roar was their first sight of Sayed Mohammed Adnan who put in five minutes off the bench and looked pretty classy at the back. Roar now have taken six points from their opening two games and have scored three goals and conceded none. Despite all the talk about losing players we really have proved that with a clearly defined system of play, and intelligent recruiting of players who fit into it, a team can keep its form rolling along. Roar have now gone to the top of the table and look once more to be the team to beat this season. Next weekend sees them take on local rivals Gold Coast United at Suncorp Stadium and it will be another big test for Roar. Bleiberg's side will prove tough to break down but Roar have the players to do it. Three from three would be a great start to the season and a great way to set up a clash with Adelaide, who looked very good last night, the week after.

Good job Roar, let's keep this train rolling along.

Footnote:  I tried to do the right thing by you punters and include highlights of the match.  Unfortunately I choose SBS's TWG website as the place to poach them.  It seems their HTML is about as good as one of Craig Foster's tedious diatribes.  One pasting it into my post it corrupted half the text and I had to go into edit mode on the raw HTML.  Nice one SBS, good to see you are as crap as ever!