South Melbourne jumps two places in the Ericsson Cup after beating Marconi 3-1 at Bob Jane tonight.
Marconi had Dominic Longo sent off shortly after the half, following a crazy challenge where he attempted to take out an on-rushing South forward. I couldn't see which one it was, but it was clearly an off-ski tackle even though our Dom disputed it. Good thing was, he didn't do a Kuzza, and after a bit of questioning of the ref, he left the park at a trot.
A couple of other talking points:
In the warm-up, it was noticable that Marconi keeper Togliacomi was frequently failing to hold the ball cleanly. He'd often have it bounce off his body. There's a chance for a Trimboli or a Spink, thought I from my possie in the stand. I wonder if Angie saw it too. If he did, the potential weakness was scarcely probed, as only in the last quarter of the game were there really any testing shots from distance.
Both teams played good fast passing football. It was the type of first half that you often see in Yurpeen Cup Final games - neither side wanting to over-commit in the first half, and both playing well within themselves at the same time as checking for weaknesses in the opposition's marking ability.
Marconi opened the scoring with a well organised piece of work which got the ball to Basic. Harper was his partner up-front at the time, and he cleverly took his marker wide, opening up some space for Casserly who swept the ball in from outside the penalty area, but directly in front where he had taken up his late position. You might not even see Harper's movement on the telly, but I reckon it was crucial to the move.
South then got a penalty shortly after the restart which was converted. You'll have to check out tomorrow's SBS to see what you reckon, but it seemed a proper call to me. One of South's mosquito fleet was felled in the box. The assistant flagged - for an offside at first I thought - but the ref pointed to the spot. The positions the various players were in during the move might well have made for an offside, and the assistant ref may accordingly have been flagging for this reason. [Note : after the handball one of the souths players did go down in the box trying to tuck the ball away in advantage play. The pk was for the handball outside the box though - TE]
South was well in control after Marconi lost Longo. But then another moment of controversy you'll have to watch out for on the replay: a South corner came over - Pogliacomi was either pushed or fell as the next thing I see he's on the ground, allowing Trimboli a free header. Corners always bring congestion into the six yard box, and I couldn't see what caused Pogliacomi's horizontality and ground proximity. Whatever it was he was a mighty unhappy camper and chased the ref and sought assistant ref help to identify the foul on him.
A weird refereeing desision came at the other end when one-time South fave Awaratife collided with Petkovic outside the box. Petkovic got to a through ball just before Awaratife and actually cleared the ball. In his follow-through and Awaratife's momentum the two players inhabited the same junction of the space-time continuum. Just one of them things that happen. But the ref saw a free for Marconi - not an indirect one for, say, dangerous play - but a direct one. Why wasn't Petkovic sent off then? There was no-one else preventing Awaratife scoring.
With the Adelaide City result, a win would push South over them as well as Marconi, but a draw would keep Marconi and Adelaide City above South. The third goal coming just five or so minutes from time stopped all that conjecture. Once again Trimboli and once again with a header. Now Trimmers is not a big bloke, and you have to reckon Manfred'll not be best pleased when he analyses that fact. I'm glad it's not me sitting next him in the plane trip back north tonight.
Fairly good crowd. Not announced, but I reckon about 7,000 or so. All were treated to two of the best sides in the country playing good creative football. I wouldn't take this result to be much of a pointer to what might happen come finals time. You'd reckon Marconi would not have lost with eleven on the park.
But who was in charge of policing the car-park exits? Not until about 20 minutes after the final whistle did it seem that two policeofficers turned up to ease the tension and congestion in Albert Park. The lights sequence up til then was only allowing three cars out at a time before giving preference to the other roads which had as much traffic on them as a Coober Pedy backstreet mid-morning on New Year's Day.
But the win'll do for me for the moment :-)