That's not football

That's how Arturo, with whom I watch most Victory games described tonight's performance. He was so angry after the game that he threatened not to go to next weekend's game against Newcastle. I would have to agree with him to a certain extent. After a first half where we threatened to tear apart the Glory with neat interchanges of passing and interplay, the second half was downright boring as we played with everyone behind the ball and played on the counter attack as we absorbed wave after wave of Glory attack. Thankfully the Glory weren't able to break through and we held onto our 2-1 half time lead. My own thought was Merrick may have been looking to conserve energy in lieu of the fact that we have only a five day turnaround until our next encounter and the conditions were quite stifling. But isn't that what substitutes are for. It may be turn out to be a stroke of genius with next weeks' result and performance being the judge.

To match the Jekyll and Hyde performance of the team, the crowd tonight was quite eerie due in part to the relative silence of the both supporter groups on the first and third levels at the "northern" end. They were, I believe staging a silent protest against the management of the Telstra Dome for not allowing the supporter groups on the third level to stand whilst chanting. Although it may have been difficult for them to maintain their silence after piece of great interplay between Hernandez and Thompson saw Hernandez slam the ball past Velaphi in the Glory goal to open his A-League scoring account. You could almost sense his relief and his confidence rise in the remaining minutes of the first half. Let's hope it continues to rise as we look a much better team when he is pulling the strings.

Injury concerns have again struck the Victory defence with Young Socceroo, Sebastian Ryall looking to have injured some part of his leg as he landed awkwardly after an aerial challenge late in the game. After the week's breakfast controversies let's hope that Milicevic and the powers that be can kiss and make up as his presence would be most welcome in the defensive part of the pitch.