Player: Daniel Allsopp, Melbourne - benefits so much from the hard running of Thompson and Caceres, as well as the precise passing of Muscat and Fred, but deserves every accolade for the way he's rebounded from a lacklustre first season to top the scoring charts
U-20 Player: Chris Grossman, Queensland (see comments)
Coach: Ernie Merrick, Melbourne - no, the defeat against Newcastle was not a sign of hard times ahead - after demolishing Adelaide with their pace, vision, movement off the ball and hard tackling, Melbourne are still clear favourites for the title
Match: Central Coast Mariners vs Sydney FC
Goal: Matt McKay, Queensland - maybe a bit fortunate Tomich was slow to get across to his far post, but a fine looping shot to win the match for Queensland
4-4-2 Team of the Week:
Daniel Allsopp - Joel Griffiths
Robbie Middleby - Kevin Muscat - Andre Gumprecht - Spase Dilevski
Matthew Kemp - David Tarka - Mark Rudan - Wayne O'Sullivan
Liam Reddy
Subs: Tommi Tomich, Dean Gordon, Fred, Nick Carle
9 comments:
U-20 Player: how old is Chris Grossman?
Grossman was in the U/20 squad at the recent championships. Leijer is already 20 - does he still count as U/20?
Err . . . aah . . . thanks for catching me out, keeping me on my toes and all that. I admit to forgetting completely about Grossman's eligibility as an U-20. He certainly deserves it this week; consider it amended.
James, your round reviews are great, but I miss your football journalism (the youth cup stuff a couple of weeks ago was the last, and very appreciated). Along with Tony and Mike, you're one of the few of us A-League bloggers who seem to have the depth of knowledge, along with the contacts, to really provide a resource of analysis and insight.
I still suspect you've found yourself a girlfriend or something, which if true is lovely, but I'm sure she'd understand just an occasional blog in between round reviews.
Cheers. ;-)
No Matt McKay James? Really he was sensational.
Hamish -
First up, thanks. It's nice to hear some positive feedback. I think the main reason for my lack of regular pieces is that this site has become sort of redundant, given its original purpose. I launched this sucker at a time when there was really very little unofficial coverage of the league on the Internet. Teams were well-represented, even some individual players, but the league as a whole was under-represented. Completely natural, given its only recent emergence. What really triggered me was that it meant doing something to push the game into the spotlight, even if only in a very restricted fashion given the laughably low number of hits. The point was that it was about taking some form of action rather than bitching endlessly about scarce coverage.
The situation has changed since the end of the World Cup. Now there are quite a few truly excellent unbiased perspectives on the A-League available through the web, the best of them truly insightful and written by incredibly devoted people, whose intellectually-oriented passion for the game puts my occasional ramblings in that vein to shame. World Cup qualification was a massive boost in this respect, bringing with it a sort of previously absent respectability to all of our fanboy-ish chit-chat.
I also started this site with the firm intention of keeping it independent - doing only what I wanted to do, when I wanted, without resorting to any kind of self-imposed or externally applied deadline apparatus. (Selfish, yes, but then I've also allowed every comment critical of my opinions to remain on the site, uncensored. Even the anonymous comments from spineless, abusive sods who have nothing better to do with their free time than launch pyrotechnic flame wars. Good luck manufacturing any kind of response from me to unsigned vitriol, but hey I'm gracious enough to take an ego bruising from the average cretinous shitbird and still allow him or her to appropriate this site for the purpose of discharging half-baked chunks of mental spew. Err, yes. But to get back to the business at hand....)
Confessions was and still is a vehicle for writing first and foremost. Through it I've been able to whang out whatever's on my mind, thus reducing the rants I direct at friends and girlfriend. Their ongoing appreciation of this fact is probably the central reason Confessions remains semi-active!
So, essentially, unless a particular issue really gets me charged up and wanting to express some point or detail, I'm not likely to roll out a new post. That sort of explains the lack of things like a promised Miron Quote of the Week - through lack of hyper interest I just wasn't prepared to dredge through every comment the former Queensland coach made each week, searching for the nutmeg. (Fortunately, plenty of you lot were, and found oodles of good stuff for the comments.) Plus, a bit of a slog and never enough time (football being just one on my major interests among way too many others).
So, a long answer, but one that I hope explains the prolonged down times and the absence of commentary on certain issues. Like everyone, I also just like to watch the damn football sometimes, without having to think about writing up a report. Just don't have the dedication. Or the benefactor!
Just an abundance of good midfielders this week - Muscat was huge, a welcome return to form for Gumprecht, Carle yet again a menace. Fred instrumental just for his killer pace and athleticism, which Adelaide never coped against.
McKay could easily have made it, although I didn't think his goal was particularly special - if Tomich had shifted across earlier instead of covering for the chip-cross he may have saved it quite easily. But McKay has been great this year. It's going to be very interesting how he develops under Farina, who I think has always been extremely good with younger players on the way up.
Well James I hope that wasn't a swan song.
You are the bar for this type of journalism. And high it is (I learned that from Miron).
I hope Frank can find other players on the way up. And quick.
Blogging is probably more required to protect girlfiends et al when your team is having the blues - that would explain so many Roar bloggers - but not why so few NZ ones. May be there are other reasons for that.
So being from Melbourne you don't have to vent so much? ;)
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