A rather lacklustre and probably tired Canberra Cosmos played very poorly in front
of the seasons largest crowd at Bruce. Marconi were down a man after only 23 minutes
when Domonic Longo was sent off for a second bookable offence. Yet, alike the other Sydney
teams this season, Marconi proved to be the hungrier of the two sides and deserved
their victory.
The game could have taken a most interesting turn with less than a minute past when
Tony Lemezina stole the ball and pushed along the goal line waiting for someone to
give it that small nudge into the goal. Perinovic was only a second too late. Strangely
enough this exactly same thing happened at the beginning of the second half as well.
Further, a third opportunity arose late in the game and finally someone was there to put
the ball away.
Up to the send off, Marconi were all over the home team with only Steve Mautone in goal
saving the team from being a few goals down. The first Marconi goal occured when Andy
Harper put a cross to an unmarked Brad Maloney, who easily put it away.
n The send off seemed to spur the Cosmos along, but poor finishing was more the order
of the day for the home team. There were many chances in the box and this continued well
into the second half until the 63rd minute.
After the send off, Harper was left alone up front and Mathew Bingley was sent back
into the defence. In the 63rd minute, Marconi coach Manfred Schaeffer brought on Francis
Awaritefe for midfielder Eric Hristodoulou and this basically changed the games complex
back into Marconi's favour.
In the 70th minute Andy Harper was allowed to run at the opponents and into the box where
he executed a great left foot shot past Mautone inside the near post. Then 3 minutes later,
Awaritefe was involved with a neat back heal before being on the end of a cross along the
6 yard box and putting the ball away to make the game safe for the visitors. It was not until
the 84th minute that Paul Wade was able to get one gaol back for the Cosmos.
Overall, the visitors deserved the win as they were more keen to win and it was disappointing
given the size of the crowd for the Cosmos to do so bad. Andrew Harper was undoubtedly the
man of the match. One good thing for the home supporters to cheer about was when the
ACT Academy won 2-1 against the front running Marconi and this with only 9 men against 11.