G'day,
Having rushed home to get to Parra Stadium for the 2nd game in our great Oceania Confederation Tournament NOT, my mate Alan and I scanned the crowded stands of the ground at the home of eels and rampant developers (sorry that's Council Representatives) for a sign of the SFS Bay 23'ers! Not visible so settle down with a hot dog among dads with kids, teens, and other baby boomers like us with that jaded "I know this will be crap" look. About 2900 there.
What can I say. Score 5-0 - should have been 10. A couple of very well set up and taken goals, and a couple of easy ones. Trimboli 2, Bingley 1 (only did 3 things all night), Arnie, and ?.
Tahiti - they feed their defenders something better than sweet potato. Paul Trimboli came up to their knees. Two or three usefull players and their stamina stayed right to the end. Some reasonable close skills but most usefull moves broke down when they were naively played off the ball by our defence.
US. Trimboli enhanced his chances with a gutsy and at times inventive display against some big boys! Craig Moore oozed class every time he did something (his pass to Trimboli for the 2nd goal was top vision stuff) but that wasn't as much as he should have. Zelic waltzed around the park with the ball tied to his boots, but faded in the second half. Bingley did bugger all, and Muscat was neither impressive nor a boofhead - just ineffective. Arnie showed some really classy touches and good poaching sense but was marked very very tight man-to-man. Hooker was workmanlike, Milan Iv. had it easy, Skoko only occasionally got forward, but Lazarides when he came on late in 2nd half at least tried to pick up the tempo of the game. Really Oz played well enough in the first half after a slow start (but except for a short spell at the 2nd half beginning) didn't go on with it. Would have liked to have seen some long range strikes instead of trying to walk it in.
I should have known Mark Bowman and the usual suspects would be there. They started to make some noise in the 2nd half and as we left the ground - yep - there they were in Oz shirts and scarves. El TV should give the Bowmans et al medals and David Hill hand over some tickets to France where the Bay 23ers will match 20,000 Poms.