Roar Endure Penalty Woes

Well it's been an interesting few days for Brisbane Roar.  First up we had a 3:3 draw over in Perth which included a comeback from a two goal deficit, a half time blow up from Ange and a dubious penalty to lose the points.  Then we picked up another point in Adelaide yesterday with yet another contentious penalty costing us all the points.  Never a dull moment as they say.

Perth Glory 3 - Brisbane Roar 3

Nichols, best of a bad lot in Perth

The Perth game was a totally bizarre.  I'm not sure what happened over there but the lads put in the worst performance I've seen from them since the infamous Boxing Day massacre a couple of seasons ago.  Collectively we were woeful and that allowed Perth to get out to a two goal lead with the second coming from a wonder strike from Mile Sterjovski.  But Roar found a way back into the game with two goals late in the first half. A long range cracker from Mitch Nichols and a header from Erik Paartalu sent the teams into the break level on two goals apiece, but it didn't spare the Roar a half time bollocking from Postecoglou who vented his spleen at the players.  Nichols gave Roar the lead with twenty minutes to play after being played through by Paartalu.  Unfortunately the win wouldn't come for Roar with an accidental collision between Ivan Franjic and Sterjovski gifting Perth an equaliser from the penalty spot.


As I said the performance was poor from Brisbane and Ange's half time rant was totally warranted and he didn't leave it at that.  Post match he lambasted his players as cowardly for not sticking to their system.  He even went as far as to say that we didn't deserve anything from the game and had robbed Perth.  In all honesty he was right.  Much was made of those comments but I think it had to be said.  If we get into the practice of accepting shit performances just because we got points then that just sees us become like the rest of the clubs in this league.  The big question would be how the players would respond.

Adelaide United 1 - Brisbane Roar 1
As it turns out they responded really well.  They went to Adelaide and slipped back into their mode we are used to seeing.  They played really well and were unlucky not to take all three points from the game.  But at the end of the day the big talking points would be the decisions of perennial talking point Ben Williams.  He proved yet again to be the wild card that can swing a match with three contentious penalty decisions.  The first saw his deny Roar a first half penalty when Rocky Visconte was clearly felled in the box and right in front of him.  But apparently that wasn't good enough for Williams and he waved play on.  The second denied Adelaide a possible penalty from a corner where Besart Berisha appeared to hand ball.  The third cost Brisbane the win with Matt Smith called for a foul on Sergio Van Dijk. The Roar skipper couldn't have been more unfortunate after being tripped by Bruce Djite and falling in front of Van Dijk who tripped over him.  That's five points that we have lost in four games as a result of penalty calls that haven't gone our way.  Sometimes luck is a real bitch.

Roar's luck runs out again in controversial penalty call

Brisbane looked to have grabbed the points in Adelaide after a well worked goal to Issey Nakajima-Farran.  After a period of pressure Smith stepped forward and pierced the Adelaide defence with a precise pass for Visconte.  The winger skipped passed a defender and cut a ball back from the byline for Issey who side footed it home to give the visitors the advantage.

Focus now turns to the visit of Sydney FC next weekend.  The word on the street is that we will have Thomas Broich and Henrique back so that should be good.  Though I do expect that it will take a couple of games for them to get back to full match fitness.  The best thing though is that the lads have responded well to Ange's rant and buckled down and started playing the right way again.  Sydney are on a bit of a bad run at the moment and if we can avoid more unlucky penalties hopefully we can grab all three points.

In other news there's been plenty of action down in Melbourne with the Victory finally sacking Mehmet Durakovic.  It's been coming for a while now so it's hardly a surprise.  There's plenty of talk about whether the board fucked up or whether Durakovic was up to the job.  At the end of the day you have to question why the board replaced their football department with a technical director, coach and assistant coach who had virtually no experience.  Durakovic and Francis Awaratife paid the price for that and Kevin Muscat unsurprisingly lives on.  He took charge of the team in a 2:0 win over Newcastle last night.  The match was played in front of the club's surprise selection as their new coach, former Ipswich Town manager Jim Magilton.  The Northern Irishman has been signed until the end of the season so it's going to be interesting to see where they go from here.