If Sydney do lose then it won't be that much of a surprise, they haven't won a round of finals football since the first season of the A League and only one game in the finals series since then.

Wellington seem to be doing rather well at penalties. Nice to see Ange Postenoclue was right in his assessment that Liam Redy was surplus to requirements. The stupid bollix.

Well, we end up with the Grand Final everyone wanted... I suppose. Sydney and Melbourne will clash in the Grand Final next week, for the fourth time in about five weeks, and for the sixth time for the season.... after Sydney's 4-2 win over Wellington last night. Pity the gloss was somewhat taken off Sydney's win by their second goal being a bit of a "hand of god" effort. Other than that I thought they looked very fluent and confident. I really think Melbourne are struggling at the moment, and will have their work cut out to match Sydney next week.

Wellington did themselves proud this season- the best performance by an NZ based team in Australian national competition since the Football Kingz joined the NSL in 1999. They seem to be everyone's second-favourite team now- only about half their squad are actually kiwis, so that probably helps! Paul Ifil had an outstanding season for them. Pity there is still a cloud hanging over the legality of their participation in the A League....

"hand of god"

Surely you mean "hand of Oz"?

Palm of Paine?

Was a good game last Saturday night, despite the controversy for the second goal the 4-2 score line was a fair reflection of the game. I was surprised how well Sydney responded, if anything the extra game may be a blessing despite the Aloisi injury, especially considering Melbourne have lost again in the ACL between semi and the final.

Flights, accommodation and final tickets have been booked! I am quietly confident the boys in blue will get the job done with the pace up front, who knows a bonus red card for Muscat but be the icing on the cake too.

Will be a close game, bot defenses look suspect at times so should be some goals..(probably be 0-0 now and penalties!)

I am assuming that this thread won't get a great deal of hits from UK based posters, which is a shame because the news of Kevin Muscat missing a shootout penalty in leading Melbourne to defeat at home in the title decider would provide much mirth.

And that's what happened. 1-1 it finished after regulation and extra time. Not a great game, but these affairs rarely are. Hard on Melbourne to have to back up on the Tuesday in Japan, but that's part of success.

It will be interesting to see how Sydney do rebuilding a squad losing so many important players. I guess they may be hoping to see if Hayden Foxe can fill in for Colosimo, but he really doesn't have the pace and has far too many injuries. They'll have to bring someone else in.

I didn't get to watch the whole game and missed the attendance announcement, but I can gather it was around 45000. I would guess not many members showed up, but it looked really full to me. I find it hard to believe the ground was 20% empty. Anyone knoe the story here?

I assume MelbourneArab would have gone to the game and would have been able to give us the Melbourne side of the story, but he has disapeared from the forum so we will never know...The pitch looked in better condition than it has done for the last couple of weeks, but was still possibly a bit sandy in places- this may even have contributed to some of the injuries, I thought.

Muscat was up to his usual tricks: every time there was an "incident", or a Melbourne player went down injured, he would descend on the ref like a one-man pack of hyenas, snapping and snarling. Only in this Grand Final, he wasn't able to intimidate the ref into sending an opponent off. Delovski, unlike Breeze in two Melbourne-Adelaide GF's in past seasons, kept his cards in his pocket.

And Muscat missing Melbourne's vital first penalty kick was the biggest laugh of all.

It was a good performance by Sydney, considering they were without arguably two of their biggest names, Aloisi and Corica. Melbourne were unfortunate to lose Thompson with a bad injury early on, as he had looked their only dangerous forward.

Challenging times ahead for both clubs next season: Sydney FC, winners of both the minor premiership and the Grand Final play-off, will have to rebuild the core of their side; whilst it will be interesting to see how Melbourne Victory cope with the entry of the new Melbourne consortium into the A League.

Agreed on the ref. Bridge's tackle in the 1st half was the kind of incident in which Breeze would have got a head of steam up and seen his name up in lights.

Melbourne's absense from this forum is a a bit of a mystery. His not at all partial viewpoints on the Victory and St Kilda were always a good read. I hope his absense is due to him anjoying a long holiday or simply deciding to stay away. I just don't recall any flouncing or disillusionment with the forum in general, so I hope all is OK with him.

Saw the Adelaide - Sanfreece Hiroshima 3:2 thriller this morning (4am CST.)

Very impressed with Adelaide's quality. I don't know if there's an Asian CL thread, but I've already seen more games this year than the UEFA CL.

jason voorhees wrote:
Saw the Adelaide - Sanfreece Hiroshima 3:2 thriller this morning (4am CST.)

Very impressed with Adelaide's quality. I don't know if there's an Asian CL thread, but I've already seen more games this year than the UEFA CL.

I was at the match last night, JV. Great atmosphere, great crowd (13k), and perfect weather conditions. The crazy thing is that Adelaide finished bottom of the A League, but are playing brilliantly in the ACL. Just two new players, Flores and Van Dijk, seem to have made all the difference.

Adelaide top their group now with three wins, but still have two difficult away games in Japan and Korea. Too bad about Melbourne, though... ha, ha!

I guess we shoudl wind the A League thread up now, as the season is over. I'll maybe start an ACL thread later. Furtho covers these matches, too, in his Japanese thread.

Trimmers

Do you know if Flores will be around for v 6.0 or just the ACL?

I didn't get to watch the whole game and missed the attendance announcement, but I can gather it was around 45000. I would guess not many members showed up, but it looked really full to me. I find it hard to believe the ground was 20% empty. Anyone knoe the story here?

I may have dreamed this... isn't it something to do with moving the stands, ie changing the ground configuration from oval to rectangle. As a consequence the ground capacity is reduced.

I'm not much fussed about the A-League. Floating Sydney fan [aren't we all?], but was glad to see the sky blues win.

I didn't get to watch the whole game and missed the attendance announcement, but I can gather it was around 45000. I would guess not many members showed up, but it looked really full to me. I find it hard to believe the ground was 20% empty. Anyone knoe the story here?

The configuration of Ettihad was changed by bringing the bottom decks forward so it was semi-rectangular rather than oval. This left the corners empty and so the capacity of the ground was therefore reduced. It wasn't a full-house but it was very close to it, some members areas were empty but that's about it.

I flew down from Sydney for it. Had an absolute blast (not surprisingly).

Same as above, took an early flight down from Sydney to Avalon and then spent the day in Melbourne. Crowd was 48,500, not sure how many Sydney took (maybe 2500) but they did their bit and in the end all you could hear was the away fans.

Highlights were obviously the 'Professor of the penalties' according to Fox Sports fluffing his lines and missing with probably his last kick of A League football..The post match police escort through the city to the Colonial hotel was highly amusing, the local Vic police being kind enough to allow a 20 minute victory parade as numerous gutted looking Melbourne fans and locals looked on.

Gratius Falsius wrote:
Trimmers

Do you know if Flores will be around for v 6.0 or just the ACL?

I think he will be at Adelaide for the next A League season. He has said he wanted to play in Australia to toughen himself up, so presumably he intends to move on elsewhere eventually.

The trouble with reading this thread after a gap of a few weeks is that there’s loads of stuff you’d like to say but, of course, everybody has moved on.

I would, however, like to sort out the confusion/misinformation surrounding the embarrassing attendance at the grand final (and if you didn’t think it was embarrassing you should have heard the reaction of Melbourne’s anti-soccer fraternity in the days following).

The crowd was 44,560 (not 48,500 as claimed by Jonas77) and the ground reconfiguration was irrelevant because the reduced capacity was still 50,000. Let’s not forget that, just 3 years ago, 55,436 watched Melbourne Victory-Adelaide United (a bigger crowd than last year’s record breaking St Kilda-Geelong game) and a further 15k couldn’t get tickets. I cannot understand Pim Verbose’s comment that only “members areas” were not full. Yes, there were empty seats in the Medallion Club and Sydney didn’t sell out their 2,400 allocation but the vast majority of empty seats were clearly visible at the top of level 3. Neither of Melbourne’s newspapers bothered to put the grand final on the front of their sports section on the day of the match and there was no build up to the game during the week. With the exception of the last 10 minutes when Melbourne should have got a deserved win, the atmosphere was unbelievably flat. I honestly believe that if Wellington had made the final, the attendance would not even have reached 35,000.

I’m really not convinced that the finals have a future – it was only the 2 big crowds in Wellington that saved the entire finals series from being a disaster although, of course, without a finals place to aim at Wellington would have had terrible crowds at the end of the league season. What I’m really saying here is there’s a huge problem but I’m fucked if I know what the solution is.

As for Melbourne Victory, the club which has propped up the A League with its crowds for 4 years (and the only A League club ever to break even) is in big trouble. The average attendance at Docklands has plunged from 32k to 21k in 3 years (2 of them grand final years). With thousands set to switch to Melbourne Heart next season, Victory’s average crowd will be back in the teens – a bad season might even see a return to Olympic Park sized crowds.

Are you switching allegiance to the Heart, MA? I think you mentioned a while back that you might be interested. What would be the reasons for (anyone) switching to the new team?

jamzinho wrote:
Are you switching allegiance to the Heart, MA? I think you mentioned a while back that you might be interested. What would be the reasons for (anyone) switching to the new team?

The main theory doing the rounds is that Heart may pick up disenfranchised ex-NSL fans of South Melbourne, Melbourne Knights and various Victorian Premier League fans. When the A-League formed, such fans (nicknamed "bitters") refused to support a "plastic franchise" like Victory. Now that the realisation is setting in that the A-League isn't going anywhere, the hope is they now might jump on the Heart bandwagon.

We shall see.

jamzinho wrote:
Are you switching allegiance to the Heart, MA? I think you mentioned a while back that you might be interested. What would be the reasons for (anyone) switching to the new team?

I won't be switching teams – it's been hard enough getting excited about one new franchise without starting again.

Heart believe they can get as many as 20% of Victory members on board although they acknowledge that some might follow both teams initially before, presumably, doing a bit of glory hunting and opting for the more successful side.

Heart will also target the 11k Victory fans who have given up in the last 3 years and I believe they could have a lot of success here.

Some stopped going because of dissatisfaction with Docklands Stadium and Heart are making a big thing of the fact they will play all 15 home games next season at AAMI Park, the new 31,000 capacity rectangular stadium. Victory are contracted (for how long I'm not sure) to play 5 games at Etihad which will be matches against Sydney, Adelaide and Heart and possibly another team depending on the draw. For the last 2 years, games against Sydney and Adelaide have not attracted 31k crowds. To make matters worse, all ACL games will remain at Etihad. Victory's average ACL crowd this year is 7k.

Victory have also lost fans unhappy with the Scottish coach and his narrow, lump it up to the big bloke (not that Victory currently play with a big bloke) style of play. This Anglo-Celtic game plan will, of course, be in complete contrast with the sophisticated, continental European, easy on the eye style of Heart with their Dutch coach (and Jesper Olsen thrown in for good measure). The fact that the two most boring teams in Australia, the Socceroos and Sydney FC, have Dutch and Czech coaches is irrelevant.

Then there are "traditional" (or ethnic) football fans. Much has been made of Victory's success in uniting the tribes but the supporters of two of Melbourne's most famous clubs, South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights, have stayed away. Victory do have a large Greek support (from clubs other than South Melbourne) but the Croatian community might jump on the Heart bandwagon – they play in red and white and look set to sign Josip Skoko. In the unlikely event they get Mark Viduka,that would be the clincher. I must say I'm not convinced that Heart will be any less "plastic" than Victory (a franchise is a franchise) but they seem to be keen on promoting this "traditional" thing.

Finally, new football fans. Lots of people got into the game after the last world cup but, this time round, it won't happen. Australia will be lucky to score a goal in South Africa let alone qualify from the group. Throw in a failed world cup bid and 2010 will be the year of the soccer backlash not the soccer boom.

Despite this, I predict Heart will be the second best supported team in the A League in 2010/11 if they are competitive – and their squad is shaping up nicely.

Good to have you back, MA.

I was not aware that Victory don't have many Souths fans. Can I cheekily float the idea that the commercial tv/papers will be pretty keen on the Heart, and will be very enthusastic about giving 'ultra culture' plenty of coverage?