Anthony Pelikan notched another double for the season as the Melbourne Knights demolished home side Sydney Olympic here at OKI Jubilee Stadium this afternoon in front of a modest crowd.
A rash of niggling fouls littered the opening minutes of this game before a first-half of thoroughly entertaining football broke out between two evenly matched sides on a sunny afternoon in Sydney that, on paper, didn't look to hold much promise.
Jim Bakis fired a shot against the bar for the home side after just eight minutes for the opening salvo of the day and just 2-minutes later Andy Vargas was put clean through by man-of-the-match Pelikan only for Olympic 'keeper Glen Moss to dramatically save.
Pelikan did manage to find the net after 12-minutes but the effort was ruled offside, but he was to have the last laugh.
Joe Schirripa chipped a free-kick into the area from the right after Hiroyuki Ishida had been unceremoniously dumped on his backside which was met by Elias Augerinos, himself having a fine afternoon, and once again the woodwork rattled as his header struck the crossbar once more.
If Olympic were suffering bad luck there was plenty of it about in the Knights first goal when the ball came invitingly to Pelikan to slip into the Olympic net after 20-minutes to give the visitors the lead.
Olympic was still creating the better running but with the pace of Andy Vargas, Pelikan and Nick Waite combining well on the break, they had their work cut out to keep the Knights at bay whilst maintaining efforts to equalize.
And so it proved when Nick Sabljak floated a free-kick into the area from the left that 'keeper Glen Moss perhaps should have made his own but a misjudged run saw the ball slip tantalizingly over his grasp to give Pelikan the simplest of tap-in headers in front of an empty net.
For all their efforts it seemed just too much for Olympic to get back into the game and with the Knights settling back into defence and hitting on the break in the second-half, the home side simply couldn't put it together inside the box. They created plenty of flowing moves and opportunity but either the final pass went astray or the ball wouldn't drop for the front men.
The Knights were well worth their three points and for Olympic it appears to be a case of getting back to square one and brushing up on basics, not least shooting practice one thinks.