By the Palm Trees – Wellington Phoenix vs Central Coast Mariners
My prediction of Victory by one last weekend was well off the mark but at half time I thought I might have sold our team short. While our performance wasn’t perfect it was up there with the best halves of football we’ve played so far this year. Matt Simon’s return to the starting side put the vigour into our first half and it seemed our side were in with a chance of stealing something from the game against one of the competitions benchmark sides. Alas, a 10 minute period in the second half consigned us to yet another ‘home’ defeat and the three goal margin was almost ‘rubbing it in’ after starting so brightly.
The game wasn’t without positives for our boys with the aforementioned Matt Simon looking the best I think I’ve seen him since before he left for Korea a couple of years ago. At the same time new kid on the block Mickey Neill again looked like a seasoned professional at this level, doing a quality job defending Victory’ danger man Kosta Barbarouses and carving out some decent attacking moments of his own.
Since the game the talk around the Central Coast has been less about the insult of home games moving and more about the fans banding together to show the club’s management and owner how much the people of the Central Coast care about their team staying put. Some well-known and long-time leaders in the Central Coast Mariners fan sphere are at the core of a new campaign to get Coasties back to our matches starting with the next home match – 27th December against Brisbane Roar. Former coach Lawrie Mckinna resigned his ambassador’s position with the Central Coast Mariners and has taken an ambassadorial role as part of this new campaign – “Stand Up For the Mariners”. As the Gosford City Mayor and the most recognisable figure connecting the community with the Mariners, Lawrie is the perfect figurehead to lead the people of the coast back to supporting the team the way they should.
The Central Coast Mariners Official Supporters Club is having their say with the owner via a strongly worded letter re-iterating the fans view – we don’t want to play home games anywhere other than Central Coast Stadium. A meeting with the management and owner is to be confirmed shortly where the OSC committee will present the fans suggestions and feedback around the issue of raising attendances and re-energising local interest. I’ve always believed that if all Central Coast stakeholders put aside differences and work together there’s plenty of scope to get things heading back in a positive direction for our unique little club.
This weekend the team travels to Eden Park, Auckland for one of the most difficult travelling fixtures on the calendar. Despite last week’s loss, reports are that the side is filled with confidence and looking forward to taking another attempt at turning around the poor run of results. News of Glen Trifiro extending his contract at the Mariners as well as talk that Mickey Neill has been, or is about to be, offered a new contract with the club can only encourage that confidence. I regard both of these guys as key future elements of our squad so I’m really pleased to see Phil Moss making these positive moves. While I still have my reservations about some of his other selections, I can see some improvement in the team and I suspect with bit of luck on our side we could nail a couple of goals to kick start things for us.
The Wellington Phoenix has been in fine form this year including Nathan Burns leading the golden boot tally at the beginning of this round. The Phoenix are proving doubters wrong and they will be an extremely tough task for the Mariners even though they will not be playing at their traditional windy Wellington home. Statistically the Mariners have a good history against the Phoenix but not in their most recent encounters and it’s hard to see recent form continuing in this one. Wellington on the other hand have played matches away from Wellington in the past and have an excellent record in them.
I can’t find a way to predict anything other than a Phoenix win in this one. I think both teams will score but the Phoenix will take the points – Wellington by at least 1.
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