Central Coast Mariners won a crucial top four clash with a weary Adelaide United at Bluetongue Stadium in a Saturday night deferred fixture, sealing a 3-0 win with a polished performance in front of a low crowd on a threatening evening in Gosford.
Both teams played an attractive, attacking game and after all the highs and, latterly, lows of their AFC Champions League campaign that concluded only three days earlier South Australia's best showed plenty of spark as they shuffled a squad that was missing influential, midfielder, Paul Reid, the still injured Paul Agostino and Kristian Sarkies, who was given a run in the curtain-raiser National Youth League game.
Importantly Eugene Galekovic was back between the posts following his suspension in the ACL Final and a spate of injuries. He had an outstanding game, pulling off many fine saves, though still unable to deny the Mariners three well taken goals.
It was not that Adelaide played badly, just that the home team played better.
With a three-pronged attack of Saso Petrovski, top scorer, Matt Simon, and Dylan Macallister Central Coast were a formidable opponent and when Adelaide central defender, Sash Ognenovski, had to leave the field for ten minutes to have a head wound stitched their task was made even harder.
With only ten men they managed to survive, but by then they had already conceded an opening goal to midas-man, Matt Simon, who can do no wrong these days.
After Petrovski had fired wide from long range in the seventh minute and Diego had shot across goal from a ball played in by Travis Dodd, the best early chance for the Mariners fell to Socceroo Mile Jedinak. His14th minute volley was blocked by a defender at the near post, but the respite for Adelaide was to be short lived.
Four minutes later Simon tapped in after sound lead-up work from John Hutchinson whose pass to Brad Porter on the left allowed the versatile wide man to angle a cross to Macallister at the far post. Macallister fired the ball back, low, across the face of goal and Simon did the rest.
A minute or so later Galekovic gathered another Macallister effort as an overworked Adelaide defence tried its best to deal with a rampant Mariners' attack.
Cassio could have brought the visitors level in the 25th when converging on Cristiano's right sided cross, but the chunky Brazilian headed down into the ground and the ball bounced over an alert Danny Vukovic.
An obviously tiring Dodd offered a weak shot at Vukovic in the 40th as Adelaide worked hard for a way back into the match.
That option narrowed markedly in the 44th.
A Porter corner from the left found Nigel Boogaard at the near post whose header fell inviting for Petrovski who had the easiest of finishes to make it 2-0.
Adelaide showed courage to fight back from the start of the second half, despite their presumed lack of energy and began the period in full cry.
A 46th minute raid was thwarted by a well disciplined Central Coast backline while a minute later Diego's cross, after good work from Scott Jamieson, found Cassio who lifted his effort over the bar.
Three minutes later the Mariners' lead was stretched to 3-0.
Another corner from Porter on the left was cleared by the Adelaide defence only as far as Adrian Caceres. The talented midfielder had a wall of players between him and the goal and swerved the ball past them and beyond a clearly unsighted Galekovic.
The introduction of Alemao off the Adelaide bench in the 57th minute gave Aurelio Vidmar's men a lot more spark but even with a greater share of possession and some promising moves nothing would go in and the possibility of a come back began to fade fast.
Alemao's booming shot in the 59th just cleared the bar while three successive Adelaide headers in the 81st minute from Robbie Cornthwaite, Dodd and co were all dealt with well by the home defence.
Two counter attacks from the Mariners failed to add to their winning margin as substitute Nik Mrdja showed more enthusiasm than polish before Diego had the last word for the visitors in stoppage time with a shot that was well saved by Vukovic at his near post.
It was an important win for the Mariners who could have slipped well down the ladder with a loss while Adelaide played well enough to suggest they will still be a force in the remaining weeks of the Hyundai A League season.
The Coast's Lawrie McKinna stated that, "We said all week that this game was a big one for us – we got three points and we’re sitting second where we think we deserve to be". Looking forward to next weekend we added, "Playing Melbourne in Melbourne, we love playing down there, we’ve had some great games down there and it’s going to be a huge game. We’ll be going down there knowing what to expect from them, but we’ll be back ourselves that we can go down there and get a result." McKinna indicated that he was pleased to be hanging in where they are, and with players returning from injury the latter half of the season was looking good.
Adelaide's coach Aurelio Vidmar admitted that he was 'dejected' but now they had a week to prepare in a more normal situation. He did not avoid the suggestion that the season was so taxing. He thought that they had done well for the first 10 minutes, and had chances or 'defining moments' to get back in the game but "we have always struggled with Central Coast, I don't know why but we have had problems". He felt that they matched the style of the Asian sides pretty well but Central Coast played a different style and were a handfull with three up front. He said that were now focussing on the upcoming Sydney game.