Nullified
To begin then, congratulations to Newcastle - to the team, Gary van Egmond and the fans. All played their part on Sunday, all came together to will, construct and execute a well earned victory. In all honesty, the Mariners were never in the contest, and in all honesty if the Holland penalty had been given, one travesty of justice would have replaced another.
Walking into the game, navigating and collecting all the merchandising on the way, the two fan groups nonchalantly mingling as they milled towards their allocated entrances, suddenly the mood changed inside the stadium, and from my point of view, it wasn’t good. I need to qualify the last statement by pointing out where we were sitting - Bay 55 row AA, high up in the western stand deep in jets fan territory.
Oh dear.
This position had two unfortunate, if inevidable consequences.
The first was to experience in panoramic spendour the Newcastle home end in all its unbridled display. When they broke out the enormous banner in its golden chimera, the sun, on cue, broke upon on the shimmering lycra covering twenty odd rows, creating a majestic sight that, strangely, was not even reciprocated at the Mariner’s end.
Where was our response?
Exhausted, it seems, still glowing in the reverie of two weeks before.
This post is not to find fault in the turnout or dedication of our fans. Reports indicate there were more Mariner than Newcastle fans, and on the day it seemed about right. They just seemed, like their team on the field, more desperate, more wanting of the prize on the day. Just like we were two weeks ago.
The second unfortunate consequence of sitting so high in the stands was to see in isomorphic clarity the travesty of our game - the game - as it played out before us.
Somehow, everything good from the previous game had vanished, every mistake we had forced the newcastle players to play in the last game was being forced onto us. Here I give kudos to Gary van Egmond for finding out the Mariners’ style of play and adjusting his team formation to shutdown and nullify the heart of our method. Jedinak, usually so assured in the middle, was giving away ball after ball, Hutchinson looked lost and overwhelmed. I am no tactician, and formations for the most part are a game of conversational bluff on my part, but even without a previous grounding in how Van Egmond laid out his team throughout the year, I could see they were playing three at the back, teaming up on Petrovski and Aloisi in the middle. Why were we playing so narrow? Why were we playing so slow, so indecisively? I remarked in a post before the game at Bluetongue that we needed to play and pass as quickly as the jets did, with less time on the ball and with quicker passes, but here we were playing like my 35’s team, always one touch too many, the delayed pass allowing their defence to get back and set up, safe in the knowledge that we would, again, pump the ball over trying to find Aloisi’s head. Very one dimensional stuff, and I could, when I didn’t have my head in my hands, channel each mariner player on the ball holding on to the ball that second too long asking himself, “who’s running off me, where’s the option?”, when there was none. The telepathy was gone, and with it any creativity in our game.
Why weren’t we pushing the ball wide more? Why weren’t the forwards running off the ball carrier? We neede to stretch the back three while the covering mids were still up the field, and in the first 20 minutes of the second half we started to do just that - sort of. Petrovski, so mobile at Bluetongue, seemed content to stay in the middle of the park near Aloisi for the most part, and in truth I couldn’t remember a fully struck shot on goal in the whole game. The venom was missing, and McKinna left it far too long to sub Kwasnik and Owens for Gumprecht and Pondeljak.
And Newcastle? They tried to pass it around in midfield, its true, and their ball skills were evidenced by a better understanding between each other - Song in particular looked much more assured on the ball, even if he wasted quite a few balls at corners and what not, but with their numerical advantage in midfield (through having a back three) they always had one more option, and our lovable bus of a defence did well I thought, bar of course Vidmar’s tragic slip. I remember vividly though the preceding three exchanges of possession before the goal. Each time we recovered the ball from a Jets attack, we immediately - in the first pass out from midfield - gave it straight back to them, coughing it up with monotonous regularity just as the Newcastle midfield had two weeks ago. Nevertheless, in truth Newcastle played prettier football for not much more result - their final third, with Griffiths held back and shadowed by Jedinak like a puppy ( a tactic thoughtfully employed by Van Egmond to drag the CCM midfield out of shape) still should have scored more than the one goal on the day, and while Newcastle did dominate on the day, the game itself was a turgid affair. People say that is how finals are, but for all the bleating on about teams who pass and play, and teams that do not, there is still not enough individual skill, and only intermittant team intelligence, in the local game to prove any pseudo-Platonic truth in football that may be espouced by those with the mind to. Van Egmond out-thought McKinna on the day, and his strengths lie in his willingness to adapt to different game situations and change his team formation to that situation. He sets out what he has and he doesn’t always get it right, but he did on Sunday.
It’s still a clumsy league, with a finals series solely there to make the FFA money. Fair enough for now, but just make the trains run on time, manage expenditure - and improve the consistancy of refereeing, please. The referees have become reagents, not solvents in the mix - resulting in reaction, and not as is their role, in distillation.
At least he’s consistent…
Tomorrow, praise for Newcastle, some sort of game analysis from row 55 AA, and some thoughts on the A-league as a whole. Vale Van Egmond!….sigh.
A Night of nights with the Coastal Cantona
” Nothing will corrupt us,
Nothing will compete,
Thank God heaven left us,
Standing on our feet ”- “Beauty and the beast”, David Bowie
I literally came to the game in a bandwagon on Sunday. For most of the season, I’d been going to the games at Bluetongue by myself. Occasionally, my sister who lives up this way would come along in the spirit of local parochialism, even if her heart really belongs to Valentino Rossi. This week however, I suddenly found myself in a seven-seat Delica van with everyone bar my mum and dad in the back rollicking along the coastal road leading to Gosford. As a fan who usually makes his communion with the multitude in a solitary fashion, this was somewhat disconcerning. The bareing of one’s obsession is always want to come a cropper in unfamiliar company, and the signs were not good when we missed the usual left hand lane turn off to the car park, and ended up roaming around the East Gosford looking for a park in unfamiliar territory.
A man of infinite habit, I had never come in this way to the stadium, but as soon as we unloaded out of the van and began slowly walking around the bay towards the palm tree end of the ground, something measured, calm and reassuring came over me. This was something new - the calm of Brisbane Waters to our left, the crammed stadium to our right. Almost beatific. All this and we got there with ten minutes till kickoff - just enough time to evict some uncoloured usurpers who dared to take our seats in Bay 17. Charlatans.
So, to the game. You have no idea how tense it was in the stands - I have since had the pleasure of watching the game on Fox, and have come to appreciate the dominance (for the most part) of the Mariners, the coughing up of the ball by Newcastle’s midfield, the hunger of our own midfield and the desperation of our defence, but- from our position it was tense. So very, very tense. We could see Kwasnik scurrying up the wings, giving Elrich hell, but we held our breath every time they long balled it to Griffiths. You could see and feel the stakes on offer, the wrestling of possession in the first thirty minutes where neither side wanted to get caught out. I thought to explain to my sibling entourage that sometimes this is what football was, a grappling struggle of wills and tense, measured play - unsexy but all the more enthralling for it - but I needn’t have bothered as they were, like me, completely absorbed in the contest.
“They only need one goal and we’re gone, right?”, my sister asked. I nodded. Every Mariner fan in the stadium knew it.
Here’s the thing. That feeling didn’t go away until the 120th minute. The pressure, the grip it exerted on us, slowly fell away as each goal was scored, but it never went away. If, as Tony overheard, it was better than sex, then it was definitely of the Tantric kind. Tension, tension, followed by momentary but not fully felt release, a sequential substitution of anxiety with relief with the scoring of each goal.
OK, I lied a bit there. The last one we unloaded in an orgy of unbelievability, forgetting for a second that they could still score one and win, but then it was back to so many times before in the season where, having taken the lead in the game, I would have happily had the game finish there and then, guilty in the knowledge that that was the only thing i paid my money for, the pretence of a fair go be damned.
In retrospect, the game went exactly to plan. Pressure play, patient probing at the start, stretching the defence down the right, cutting in on the edge of the box to shoot, a goal in each half around the same time (10 to 15 minutes before the end), and the sheer, ruthless elegance of Petrovski’s last goal in the 5th minute of extra time.
With that goal, Sasho in his imperious, joyous, mongrel style became the “Cantona of the Coast”. McKinna, in the post-match interview, was being asked who had what injuries, and someone asked how Sasho was. McKinna chuckled and said, “Yeah Sasho’s fine. He `scored two goals. He doesn’t feel anything..”, at which point Adam K, who was sitting exhausted next to him, cracked up laughing. Invincible, irresistable, and at home on the Coast.
Adam himself endeared himself to the faithful by throwing his boots in to the crowd at the end of the game, and going back to the Kendall Bar later to thank the fans, and was given a Marinator “premiers T-shirt” for his troubles. The new Donkey shirt perhaps?
So, I apologise here and now for not adequately describing the effort and determination of each team member on the night - they were all superb, young and old.
Anyway, now they have a grand final to win. They have already won over the Coast.
I still have to pinch myself. It’s Wednesday, and I’m still tingling.
On Sunday, in Heaven, they left us standing on our feet. My my.
Pre-match body language
In hindsight of course, its easy to see. It’s 1 versus 11. Tomorrow, a step-by-step study of delerium in the guise of a real post.
The long way home
Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.†- Richard Rorty
After the euphoria, nay relief (two emotions that are in truth two side of the same coin) of Wednesday’s decisive result by the national team against Qatar, this little black duck’s mind has now drifted back to Sunday’s return semi at Bluetongue.
Apparently we are going to attack. Well duh.
Apparently we need to keep a clean sheet. Ditto duh.
Aloisi’s cameo on Wednesday wasn’t exactly electric, but by then the rest of the team were drifting into a kind of tiredness come smugness that harked back to the Asian Cup travails, the lazy long balls had started to appear from the back,and when he scuffed that sitter near the end no one but Pim seemed to care. At three nil up, perhaps he had his mind on not aggravating his knee after hyperextending it against Sydney (or was it Adelaide?), and in truth his best goals for the Mariners this year have not been from through balls but from pinpoint crosses onto his head or boot in the final third.
Truthfully, its a hard ask to get three or more past Newcastle. I brought myself to watch the first half of the last game with all its controversies, but something I did notice was even though we played bright attractive football and our passing game was crisp and fast, and we broke well (at times direct, at times more considered), when they broke their interchanges were just that half second faster between each other - that fraction of a second less time to think where to pass or who to pass to. That moments hesitation on our part that let North and the rest drop back or turn - think that last goal they scored against perth, where with three touches through three players Bridge was through and in on goal. In a physical league such as ours, where the Zullos and Kruses get smacked for exposing their lumbering markers, where the packing of the midfield is de rigeur to stifle movement of the ball, where the salary cap and full time employment bears evidence to ever increasing fitness, if not technical level of players, we may reach a point where it comes down to a split second between the attack or the defence being broken down.
We need to look long at the Socceróo’s first half display if we are to break down a very resolute Newcastle defence. We need to stretch them by working down each wing in neat interchanges, then cut the balls back to Hutchinson or Owens on the edge of the penalty area to cross for Aloisi’s head or boot while the defence is out of shape. we need to mix this up with square balls along the ground for Pondeljak, Owens or Hutchinson to shoot from just outside the box. We need Petrovski circling like a shark in the box looking for scraps, then drawing defenders wide like Mcdonald did so well on Wednesday. We need Simon to be an absolute bloody nuisance, and for Jedinak to own anything and anyone on our side of the halfway line. Most of all though, we need our defence to anticipate, in milliseconds, the moment Newcastle attempts any hi-speed passing interchanges out of midfield. If we chase we are lost.
Apparently, by yesterday there were seven single empty seats left in the stadium. Nearly seven percent of the entire population of the Central Coast will be there on Sunday - again. This time, me and my family crew are in the thick of it in bay17, right next to the Marinator faithful. View be damned this time, its in to the mix for this one, and I’m dragging a few siblings and a scottish brother-in-law with me for luck. Of course, if you knew my relationship with that beast (the lady, not big Jimmy), you’d be snickering in your weetbix by now. Like the Phoenix game, a certain “what-the-fuck” abjectivity has always held me in better stead.
As for the result, well……paper, rock or scissors anybody?
Meh, if we don’t win by three we get one more game at Bluetongue.
The long way home!
In retrospect, prescient - Kwasnik in the 93rd
I actually can’t think of anything I have enjoyed more than watching the Mariners play in the pouring rain last Saturday night - the occasion, the destiny in their own hands that night, the building pressure as the game went on, and then in the second half the inevidible first goal that sent them on their way.
The rain, ahh the rain, that washed away the big night outers, leaving everyone dressed in yellow and soaked to the bone, the weather and stalls be damned, the focus all the more intense onto the field of play, the players all the more willed towards the prize, the release all the more intense when it comes. Bay 16 probably put on its best effort I have ever heard, driven on by the Marinator faithful to sing all game, taunting the sleet to do its worst. From the Western stands, you looked back to see the surrounding mountains shrouded in cloud - we were deep in the jungle of South America or Thailand, amidst a monsoon of fervour that, with the rest of the stadium now spontaneously chanting like never before, became for me a Fitzccaraldo moment, an improbable goal somehow realised in the depths of a hostile nature. And tragic, for what else is sitting in the rain watching a game but tragic, eh?
1-0 up in the ninetieth minute then, something we should have been grateful for, suddenly yet knowingly seemed not enough. Perhaps it was the need to be actually on better goal difference than the jets, and not just on goals scored, perhaps many more than I had done their sums and intrinsically knew we needed more than one to have any hope of taking the premiership out (not mathematically, but in the mind of Sydney and Qld).
And then, in the 93rd, Kwasnik slotted the second in. The crowd exploded, I exploded and I jumped up, ran to the barrier yelling “SHIT YEAH!”, in the process almost ending up on the field of play when what I thought was a solid barrier turned out to be a swinging gate onto the pitch, which then gave way as I rushed in exuberation. Young Adam ran pretty well directly towards us in the far corner (we migrated towards the Phoenix goal in both halfs, away end or not) and screamed the exact same phrase- “SHIT YEAH!” - he knew what it had meant, we knew it too, somehow that goal was a turning point, the final play that would, butterfly wing-style push the procession of events that would eventuate the next day. Sydney now needed two, this game was now unlosable, the team had put a fitting stamp to the end of a season that had in turns seduced and tormented all of us until the very end. We had finished above Newcastle, satisfaction in itself, and the other teams could now do their worst.
Which of course, in due course, they did.
We did it!
The stars and the planets have aligned, our foes have stumbled , and now having never been breached for most points all season, now we go to Asia!
I hereby publish this at the exact moment that we take out the A-League Minor Premiership.
Some notes on the slide
- Saturday was shattering in one sense and exhilarating in another.
- I felt nauseous when I realised what the result had meant.
- This had nothing to do with you dear reader.
- This game is cruel when the two guys who shouldn’t have been there score against you.
- Clarkey’s dad thought Wilkinson is too young for the captaincy.
- It has done nothing for his form.
- The captaincy should mean nothing.
- O’Grady turns and moves like a bus - no, really.
- I wanted the premiership more than anything else.
- We don’t deserve the premiership.
- We may still win the premiership.
- Every other time we have stumbled and slowed in the season, everyone else has choked when they were about to outstrip us on points.
- We have not meant to do this, and neither have they.
- Our defence at the moment resembles a second hand car - repair one part and another breaks.
- Where have the triangles gone?
- Start Simon.
- Rest Hutchinson.
- Play Boogaard
and Vidmarin the centre. - Play Wilkinson at right back, and Ceccoli on the left.
- Play three four three.
- Play Owens, Jedinak, Gumprecht and Pondeljak in midfield.
- Play Simon, Aloisi and Kwasnik up front.
- Bring on Petrovski for Simon or Kwasnik in the sixtieth.
- Go to a four four two - Jedinak to centre back, Kwasnik/Simon to midfield.
- Score four or more in the first half.
- Forget about the Dutch guy in the stands.
- Wait.
- Hope.
- Repeat after me, “it’s only a game”…
- Laugh nervously.
- Prepare to do it all again next week.
(after bikini girl)
In the flesh
I started to wonder why I’d lost a bit of the passion for posting here, after all we are still top of the league (god knows how but we are) and with but two games left we have what seems the easiest last two games of all the top four pretenders.
Then I realised that, by missing the two five-goal heartbreakers I have in fact not seen the team live since Round 12 and the 2-0 defeat of Adelaide. Thats two months ago. In some pseudo-catholic way I have missed the “communion” at Bluetongue, the stage, arena, carnival and colluseum - this is as close as I come to going to church, believe me. Watching the games on T.V, usually on the big screen at the club across the road, still brings the usual waves of glee, fear, elation and disgust at the appropriate moments, but it does not compare to “being there”, because all these feelings are primarily borne of, and live in my mind - even in a room of fellow fans, the mundane solipsis of your own created experience is, in the end, rarely breached. The T.V screens make sure of that, not because they act as some Cartesian focal point of view ( after all, we enact the same thing watching the players on the field), but because the screens themselves are a (poor) simulation of watching the game “in the flesh”.
There is something to be said for “presence” then, but it goes further than that. What you get is a (at times quite substantial) collective transferal of will directed at, and through, the players on the field, a mass firing of mirror neurons actually becoming the player as he shoots, tackles or dives to save or score a goal. Witness for instance a hate thread on a forum about a player who has not or does not fulfill our enacted intentions - masked as an evaluation of their skill (or lack thereof), it instead bears testimony to the broken transferal between fan and athlete, expectant father and disappointing son.
Again, one can do this solitarily (or in company) in front of a screen, as one does, but the difference in actually witnessing the game is in the realisation that the players are in fact mere men on a field - known, admired, scorned and adored - in an existential sense no more than the men and women you might see running around at a local park on any weekend. They ARE skilled, their moves perhaps more poetic, nay easthetic to watch,but they are but figures in a field, strangley small to the eye. It’s hard to describe, but they seem “merely mortal” in an age of image, media and more media, and sometimes it seems all the better to inhabit their efforts as we will our intentions on. There’s nothing sinister to that - passion is the costume of the mind. But when you are at the game, you realise you are the spectacle. You came to watch, but became the spectacle. Suddenly, the orderly, solipsic procession of perception that would have you merely watching the players turns wonderfully weird, as first you become the “atmosphere”, the air of the event, and then as (by now) this atmosphere virtually becomes the player on the ball, phantasising the result of their physical efforts as (or before) they do it themselves, and all of this enacted through the human cyphers on the field. Desire devours Beauty, so the saying goes.
No wonder they get paid so much. We should probably a rebate from Medicare every time we go to a game.
So, anyway, my first game in two months, and as I posted a few games back rather prophetically, this one will be intense. Beat the Auld Enemy and the Championship is just about ours. Haven’t lost to them here in the two years I’ve been coming, but haven’t won either (bar a pre-season semi) - and we need three points. WE must close our eyes and think of either the last two games against Adelaide, or the first twenty minutes of our games against Sydney. WE are at home. We are at full stength. WE have been top of the league for all but two rounds of the premiership. WE have the will to finish this as we started it. WE must not fail now.
There you go, I just inhabited McKinna. On Saturday, I’ll be channelling Jedinak.