Self-Destruct Button (GCU) 2 Glory 1

By: Ben | October 21st, 2009

Glory suffered a pretty rough 2-1 loss at Gold Coast United on the weekend. self destruct

I caught the game live on Fox, and thought the lads were a bit slow to get going, although our opposition were surprisingly poor too.

Nevertheless, the Goldies took the lead through Jason Culina’s deflected free-kick which came off Scott Neville, who had a horror return to the starting side in Andy Todd’s absence.

Wayne Srhoj, in my opinion Glory’s best player all season, had our best chance of the first-half with some classy play before his shot let him down with GCU keeper Jess Vanstrattan saving low.

But once the second-half kicked off, we seemed to step up. Todd Howarth equalised after some more good work by Srhoj set up Victor Sikora. The Dutchman’s slightly deflected throughball fell nicely for Howarth who slotted under Vanstrattan.

But while I was up on my feet in the loungeroom doing fistpumps, all of a sudden, GCU went ahead again as Glory pressed that all too familiar ‘Self Destruct’ button with Jamie Coyne and Neville getting all mixed and allowing Joel Porter to set up Shane Smeltz from close-range.

Glory were robbed by another inadequate refereeing decision later on in the half, as Branko Jelic had a goal scrubbed out for a woeful offside call.

And Jelic had earlier had a fair penalty shout waved away when Kristian Rees had clearly denied him fair play on the ball with a tug inside the box.

And there was more ordinary refereeing when serial dickhead Steve Pantelidis got away with an elbow to Jacob Burns’ head.

I hate going on about the refs, but when you play so well and get denied when you clearly shouldn’t of, it’s hard not to.

The thing I took out of the game was without Mile Sterjovski we played better!

To be honest, Mile’s been ordinary this season and I’ve always thought he’s fairly overrated. Anyway, we’ve been directing alot of play through him and we were better for his absence.

I like seeing Srhoj get further forward as he can beat players while Howarth was good on the left and Sikora continues to threaten when he decides to focus on the game rather than other matters. Jelic’s shooting lets him down, but he’s dangerous enough with good service.

Down back I like Tando alot, despite his occasional f%$kup, while Chris Coyne’s been our best signing along with Andy Todd, while Naum Sekulovski’s having a solid season at left-back.

Against GCU Jamie Coyne was okay, but found out for the goal, while Scotty Neville is a player I like, but he battled on Sunday.

Anyway, next up we’ve got NQ Fury up in Townsville and considering they’ve havent won up there yet, they’ll be up and about.

But we should leave far Nth Qld with 3 points if we’re going to threaten for the title and I fancy our chances on Sunday’s evidence. That’s as long as we don’t self destruct again.