Well fellas and girls (I hope there are some girls out there among the group) here is my snap attempt at a review after the match tonight!
Entertainment value overall: 6/10 (1st half 4/10)
The first 10 minutes saw 4 good chances for the Breakers and most play inside the UTS half, but Olympic absorbed the pressure and started to dominate. Despite getting more possession they were far from fluent and not the side that played sweet stuff of last season! Newcastle was wasting a lot of possession when getting into the UTS third but at least they kept pushing up. They definitely missed Clayton Zane up front. With (I think) Harry James playing forward and Jason Bennett and Troy Halpin dropping deeper they still lacked variation coming forward. UTS were being well served by Norman Tome and Chris Trajanovski but were finding the close man-to-man marking hard to shake off!
The first half was pretty equally shared but fairly ordinary. This may have been partly due to the Referee (didn't catch the name) who was quite poor, not letting play flow. It was a physical game but the whistle and the yellow cards were up too much!
The second half started as the first had finished but a series of incidents turned the play up a few notches! A clash of heads between Jason Bennet and a UTS defender with both going off bleeding for treatment, followed by a Nick Meredith own goal certainly livened things up! To their credit UTS flung themselves forward with more vigour and secured a quick equaliser via David Barrett (from one of those lapses NB defenders have been known for but are thankfully getting rarer!).
The sending off of Harry James - (I think : again couldn't hear the announcement) for what seemed to us a fair attempt to get the ball combined with the UTS keeper's poor attempt to come out - really put the Breakers on the back foot! Olympic now played with some fluency and a second goal made it staring to look like they were going to swamp the 10 man Breakers! Some very brave and competent defending kept them at bay, as well as some poor rushed shots off goal!
And yes it was Harry James who was sent off! I still think it was OK but will look at the highlights! Kossie nearly killed the kid on the way off due his first card I reckon! A stupid throw the ball away at the free-kick lark!
For the last 5-10 minutes the Breakers started to keep possession coming forward and to expose the now square UTS backline. A well taken goal by Glen Moore put paid to Olympic's dream of 3 points and the final scoreline ran out 2-2 (given the dubious send-off, a fair result) for the Breakers 6th draw!
Best for Olympic were Norman Tome (1st half), Nick Meredith (despite the og) , and Alastair Edwards. Best for the Breakers were Liam Baker, Troy Halpin, and Robbie Ironside. Wouldn't pick a man of the match - Troy Halpin or Liam Baker perhaps.
Hope Tome and Traja are in more sparkling form for the Socceroos on the 25th!
NB: My errors will be fixed when I can check the facts!