Wanderers Survive Hellenic Cyclone

[mack]

The Western Sydney Wanderers performance was far from perfect but they managed to overcome a spirited Hellenic Darwin FC team with a 4-3 win in Darwin tonight.

The Wanderers dominated the opening stages and it did not take long to cement their dominance into a lead on the board. 7 minutes, a Wanderers corner kick was played to the near post where the Hellenic defender Ross Billias flicked the ball over the head of his despairing keeper for 1-0.

It did not take long for Western Sydney to double their lead. Brendan Hamill found an acre of space in the middle of the pitch and he strode forward into the Darwin penalty area. After playing the ball ahead he was scythed down by a defender and the referee had no hesitation pointing to the spot. Marquee striker Oriol Riera stepped up to take the penalty and made no mistake to make the lead 2-0.

Bruce Kamau down the right wing and beat his defender all ends up, his cutback found Kosta Grozos who made a mess of his shot. Nick Fitzgerald had the next best chance, having coming on for Grozos who took a knock after a poor challenge, he fired into a Darwin player.

Hellenic had nothing at all on the ball and so resorted to thrashing away at the Wanderers players. In addition to Grozos getting his head knocked off, they hacked out at Roly Bonevacia and Oriol Riera earning multiple players yellow cards.

Darwin hit back after a period of lackadaisical play by the visiting team. A horrible mix up at the back saw Brendan Hamill stepping up and completely failing to stop a ball over the top that Tass Mourdoukoutas had an air swing at, giving Darwin captain Daniel Smith a saloon passage to knock the ball past Danijel Nizic making his debut for an A-League club. The sides headed into the break with the match delicately poised at 2-1 to the Wanderers.

A horrific error from Danjiel Nizic gifted Hellenic an equaliser. Kearyn Baccus took out a Hellenic player in an awful tackle wide but deep inside the Wanderers half. Hellenic's Nepalese wunderkind Sulav Maskey launched a long free kick that was completely misjudged by Nizic and it glided over his head into the back of the net.

After weathering the Hellenic storm the Wanderers took a practically undeserved lead in the 67th minute. With one of their first major attacks of the half, Bruce Kamau split the defence with a through ball for Nick Fitzgerald his ex-Melbourne City team-mate. Fitzgerald kept onside and found a cut-back to Oriol Riera who couldn't miss from a meter out.

The undeserved lead was wiped away instantly with Maskey scoring his second of the game. Tokich hit a header to no-one in the middle of the pitch, it fell to a Hellenic midfielder and he split the Wanderers inept defence with a wonderful through ball against a defence back on their heels. With Maskey heading in on goal, Nizic made another mistake by rushing out of the area, getting caught on the edge of the area in no man's land and getting lobbed for 3-3.

Nizic should have had his night ended with a horror moment in the 80th minute. The Wanderers were caught square in defence yet again, and yet again Nizic steamed out of the area, he was late to the ball and watched it nodded over his head, before obliterating the Hellenic player in front of him. Brendan Hamill managed to clear the ball off the line to save his side from going behind. The referee ruled a corner when it could easily have been a penalty and a yellow if not red card for the keeper.

Fatigue set in for Hellenic deep into stoppage time and the Wanderers took advantage to score the winner. A Nizic long bomb fired forward found the head of Riera, his knock down was run onto by Kamau and the pacey winger cut back to Bonevacia who was unmarked on the 6 yard box and he buried it to take a late 4-3 lead. 

One word to describe the victory was lucky. The Wanderers were completely outplayed by an amateur team, the midfield was bullied off the ball and the likes of Grozos & Tokich were invisible and played no major part in the game. The debut of Nizic could easily have resulted in a send off to go with his two mistakes that cost the side goals. The positives were Riera in an otherwise disinterested display making the most of his best chances, and Nick Fitzgerald who came on in the first half and showed more intensity than the rest of the team combined.

Had the Wanderers matched up with any of the A-League clubs or a larger NPL club that effort would have been a losing one. Instead they went into the Round of 16 draw where they were drawn to play against local team Bonnyrigg White Eagles.

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[Unlimited]

My take on the Nizic non-penalty: yes, Nizic took out the attacker, however the ball was lobbed over the goalkeeper already. Referee plays advantage instead of the penalty, and it is by luck it was cleared off the line and out for the corner. Could've been a yellow card but 50/50 going for the ball, yeah whatever.

I think the right call, because if the referee had called for the penalty and the ball had gone into the net, there would be protests of "Where was the advantage?" Additionally, if Nizic had saved the penalty that would've been a disastrous refereeing decision to award the penalty in the first place, rather than waiting and letting the goal be scored.

[mack]

I don't see how letting the ball get cleared off the line is advantage enough to wipe away a penalty and a potential red card.

[bombagol]

Look at the result positively:

We were just maximising NAB's $2,500 per goal donation to the non A-League club for every goal they scored.

[hawks2767]

Shocking performance absolutely terrible. They seriously looked like they didnt care.

Hellenic coach could smell it and would have said at half time to try beat defenders and whaddya know it worked a treat.

It's going to be round 10 before we start playing properly as a team isn't it.

[Hughesy]

We only scored the winner cause they ran out of puff right at the death. Until then they had us covered for 99% of the game.

I was watching the dodgiest stream at the time of the Nizic incident and could hardly make out where they were on the pitch lol

[102megan]

Disappointing that the players couldn’t be bothered acknowledging the travelling (or local) fans...

[Burztur]

9 hours ago, bombagol said:

Look at the result positively:

We were just maximising NAB's $2,500 per goal donation to the non A-League club for every goal they scored.

We're so charitable! 

[teddies]

4 minutes ago, Burztur said:

We're so charitable! 

We're bigger than football! 

[Unlimited]

10 hours ago, mack said:

I don't see how letting the ball get cleared off the line is advantage enough to wipe away a penalty and a potential red card.

Perhaps, but what is a penalty? It's a shot on goal. The referee calls a foul to give back what was taken away from them through an unfair challenge 

it could be argued that the striker already had his shot on goal which was cleared off the line

so it wouldn't make sense to call a foul and award yet another shot on goal

Or referee didn't see it so couldn't award the penalty - who knows

[LeeMarvin]

2 hours ago, 102megan said:

Disappointing that the players couldn’t be bothered acknowledging the travelling (or local) fans...

Yes I noticed that too and was a bit disappointed - especially as the ground announcer was pretty charitable in wishing the Wanderers good luck in the League.

[mack]

6 hours ago, Unlimited said:

Perhaps, but what is a penalty? It's a shot on goal. The referee calls a foul to give back what was taken away from them through an unfair challenge 

it could be argued that the striker already had his shot on goal which was cleared off the line

so it wouldn't make sense to call a foul and award yet another shot on goal

Or referee didn't see it so couldn't award the penalty - who knows

But you don't get penalties for having a shot on goal taken away, you get a penalty for a foul in the penalty area. Nizic's reckless late challenge was a clear foul, and then for a red card the ref would decide if he stopped an obvious goalscoring opportunity or that it was so late and reckless that it deserved a red card for excessive force, and since he flattened the poor Hellenic player I think that it did reach that level.

[wswnick]

Babbel said in an interview only days before this game that we conceded way too many goals last season and he was working on fixing that. After conceding 3 last night lets see what he does about it.

[StringerBellend]

10 minutes ago, wswnick said:

Babbel said in an interview only days before this game that we conceded way too many goals last season and he was working on fixing that. After conceding 3 last night lets see what he does about it.

Firstly not start with 3 maybe 4 of that back 5

vedran, risdon and Aussie pat will come in at least, I’d hope we get another CB as well. Llorente is the only one of that back line and keeper that should start 

[mack]

Saw this on twitter. Looks more like a hostage photo than a celebration.

[wswnick]

It's the most appropriate response to their performance. No more smiling after poor games.

[102megan]

On a positive note - the Darwin media have not stopped talking about the match!!!  The NT News had several articles on it, and every news break on the radio is mentioning it.

Fantastic stuff!

[TheSweeper]

1 hour ago, mack said:

Saw this on twitter. Looks more like a hostage photo than a celebration.

I hope our policy is not to pay any ransom . 

[ZachMercer]

2 hours ago, mack said:

Saw this on twitter. Looks more like a hostage photo than a celebration.

My 9 year old son has the exact same expression on his face when he knows dad's about to lose his sh*t.

[MathyouWSW]

2 hours ago, mack said:

Saw this on twitter. Looks more like a hostage photo than a celebration.

O'Doherty looks like he's been smoking a few cones before this photo...Seriously, WTF.

I really hope this was just nerves for Nizic and he doesn't turn into Redmayne 2.0 otherwise he'll be in the carpark just like Sotirio will be all season. 

That Maskey kid, I'm not sure if that second goal was a fluke or not but he made Nizic look amateur. 

[Hughesy]

I’m not gonna write him off after one game but Nizic looked incredibly nervous and shaky. I don’t know whether it was the dodgy stream I was watching or what but there were a few moments in the second half there where he looked like he’d just learnt how to throw a ball out 

[StringerBellend]

2 hours ago, hughsey said:

I’m not gonna write him off after one game but Nizic looked incredibly nervous and shaky. I don’t know whether it was the dodgy stream I was watching or what but there were a few moments in the second half there where he looked like he’d just learnt how to throw a ball out 

Their goalie looked like some guy they pulled out of crowd for a “play a game in the FFA Cup competition” our goalie played like it 

[Swanderer]

1 hour ago, StringerBellend said:

Their goalie looked like some guy they pulled out of crowd for a “play a game in the FFA Cup competition” our goalie played like it 

Their backup goalie looked in worse shape.............

[Unlimited]

9 hours ago, hughsey said:

I’m not gonna write him off after one game but Nizic looked incredibly nervous and shaky. I don’t know whether it was the dodgy stream I was watching or what but there were a few moments in the second half there where he looked like he’d just learnt how to throw a ball out 

Tbh it was probably nerves

I remember reading an article about Barthez (the French goalkeeper) in the 2006 WC Final when he conceded the goal to make it 1-1. He said something like, "I was nervous so I rushed out to try and punch the ball away, but I got beaten to it"

It just happened to Nizic like three times in the one game and we got punished twice

[StringerBellend]

3 minutes ago, Unlimited said:

Tbh it was probably nerves

I remember reading an article about Barthez (the French goalkeeper) in the 2006 WC Final when he conceded the goal to make it 1-1. He said something like, "I was nervous so I rushed out to try and punch the ball away, but I got beaten to it"

It just happened to Nizic like three times in the one game and we got punished twice

Yes he’s three times as goood as Barthez

[Unlimited]

6 minutes ago, StringerBellend said:

Yes he’s three times as goood as Barthez

Well Barthez was 85 on FIFA...

[Prydzopolis]

I had a disaster of a night with the Foxsports app. 

First logged into via safari on an old iPad. The main channel worked for streaming but not the on demand games. Downloaded the app & wouldn’t accept the password. Same deal with iPhone app, no idea why the new password wouldn’t work  

From all accounts it seemed like one of those games where the result was all that mattered, apart from the 90 minutes in the legs, don’t think you can extrapolate much for the season two months away.

Looking forward to the Bonnyrigg game!

[hawks2767]

Pretty sure Bonnyrigg are being relegated to NPL2 next season.

Lets see how much it can be taken into consideration when picking the winner of that match.

[Paul01]

5 hours ago, hawks2767 said:

Pretty sure Bonnyrigg are being relegated to NPL2 next season.

Lets see how much it can be taken into consideration when picking the winner of that match.

BWE have been relegated. Their 1st grade finished 11th yesterday so will not play another competitive game till the game against us. Pretty sure last round they also had a few players sent off and they may or may not return in that game. Looks like it will be a hack-a-thon. 

[Erebus]

On 10/08/2018 at 8:25 PM, Unlimited said:

Tbh it was probably nerves

I remember reading an article about Barthez (the French goalkeeper) in the 2006 WC Final when he conceded the goal to make it 1-1. He said something like, "I was nervous so I rushed out to try and punch the ball away, but I got beaten to it"

It just happened to Nizic like three times in the one game and we got punished twice

Nerves has nothing to do with being chipped twice and almost a third time because you rush out and miss the ball allowing the striker to get to it first. its just poor positioning and decision making.

If you get nervous playing a Sunday team, how is he going to feel when facing McClaren, Honda, and Ninkovic?

Vedran can't get fit soon enough.