Style over substance
What a game to miss, so many singular pleasures heard but not seen. The return of Mark Bosnich, a 3-0 drubbing of Sydney, Bradley Porter’s first goal for the Mariners, Nicki Mrdja smashing a penalty in, it was all good. at this time of year, when my playing season overlaps with the pre-season, I have to draw the line at one day of football on the weekend - I travel 5 days a week to Sydney, my wife travels 5 days a week the same distance to Newcastle to study, so the importance of spending at least one day a weekend with the source of my “existential happiness” (who, you may gather, does not share my passion for football) is paramount, to say the least. Certainly, the current exploits of my own team also take precedence at the moment, continuing as it did with another win against the current ladder leaders, after beating the then leaders the week before. After a slow start to the season scoring only 10 goals in 11 games, we have now risen from 5th to 2nd, scoring 23 goals in the last four games. Pass short, pass often, and defend like hell when you have to. Oh, and keep your cool…
Nevertheless, I listened to the game online courtesy of the boys at Coast FM, who are always good value, and while they might meander off sometimes during a game, they absolutely go off when the Mariners score ( my favorite sound bite would have to be all four of them yelling “Petrovski!!!” in unison at the top of their voices when Sasho belted that third goal against the Jets in the second semi final last season). Now, there is something to be said for “being there” when something special happens at a game, the being witness to some nominally unique event, but I will still maintain that to hear the same event has its own particular easthetic, borne out by the fact that your response to the event, given you are as focused on the play AS IF you were there, brings the same prozaic rush of incredulity and excitement as if you watched it. So it was with Bosnich’s penalty save. At the moment the boys yelled “he’s saved it!!”, I burst out into a convulsive peal of laughter - the icing on the cake after The Mariners had already banged in three goals, and only minutes after Mrdja had so confidently taken his own penalty. Bosnich’s rude talent, still there for all to see (or hear) formed the basis of his redemptive return, a talent rusty but still intact after years of a life lived many times over. Whatever happens next, whatever the marketing potential or opportunistic arrangement gleaned by the club or the player, this game will be remembered for Bosnich, and Mark himself will perhaps remember it as a signifying point of his own existential redemption, borne not of moral or ethical considerations, but from just getting back to what you love doing.
Back to the game then, and another personal highlight for me (among many) was the pick-up of Pedrag Bojic, not just for the extra defensive ability he brings, but the fact that he was signed from Sutherland Sharks. Readers who may have read my very first post on this blog may recall me recounting tales of following Sutherland way back in 1975 or so, a few years before the NSL even started, so like it seems that, with the signing of Bojic, things have turned full circle, and a part of my first mad following has returned to my second.
Other highlights included not only Brad Porter scoring, but being played in his natural position in midfield, instead of playing in the backs as has so often happened in the past. I still think we needed to sign a creative midfielder, and in the past was perhaps worried not so much by the signings of McAllister, Elrich and Caceres (all excellent in my opinion if they can play to their true potential) but by the apparent “transparency” of McKinna’s recruitment strategy - a return it seemed to version 1 play, speedy wing attack and lobbing it onto Dylan’s head, and, I presumed, the stultifying and control of central midfield through Hutchinson and Jedinak. Well, it may seem obvious, too easily read on paper as it were, but it seemed to work on Sunday. Listening to the game, they fed Elrich all game, and all three new recruits had good games. Dylan’s flick onto Porter for the first goal was class (ok, I watched that on youtube), and the guy got back to defend and pick up the tallest man on corners ( a frailty in the defence that leaked too many goals last season). Sasho got picked up for offside more times than not, but he still scored, so meh! Wilkinson pulled off some great last tackles to deny Sydney’s strikers in the box, Caceres had a strong 90 minutes (take that Merrick!) and in the final eternal return of the afternoon, Nicki Mrdja made his third comeback at Bluetongue to collect and put away a penalty.
Full circles, returns and existential redemptions - what more could you ask for?
Certainly not an ending.
Back into it
“All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football” -Albert Camus
“In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team” -Jean-Paul Sartre
(via philosophyfootball.com)
Now, where was I?
Playing football, of course. When you’ve got nothing to say, go out and play. As has been said, the body knows what the mind discovers, and off season gossip and tabloid revelation is a poor substitute for your own clumsy, leaden, sometimes skilful and ultimately exhausting attempts at playing the game at your own level.
John-Paul Satre and Albert Camus, two old partisans-cum-existentialists, once had an argument over the same semantic point. Satre said “to be is to do”, while Camus begged to differ, saying “to do is to be”.
I’m with Camus on this one, and it is no surprise to learn that he was once a football player too. Sport is, at it’s core, existential in nature - for all our love of it, it is still the aestheticising of will with effort and nothing more. Whether it be the in pleasure of experience, or in the experience of pleasure, the playing or the watching, the beauty of it all is that it can mean both everything and nothing. Pretty much like art really, when you make it.
Back soon.
Nullified
To begin then, congratulations to Newcastle - to the team,Gary van Egmondand 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 theymilled 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 inevidableconsequences.
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 uponon 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 moreMariner 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 inisomorphic clarity the travesty of our game - the game - as it played out before us.
Somehow, everything good from the previous game had vanished, everymistakewe had forced the newcastle players to play in the last game was being forced onto us. HereI 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 ofour 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 onPetrovski 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, andI could, when I didn’t have my head in my hands,channeleach 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 inour 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 first20 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 wellI thought, bar of course Vidmar’s tragic slip. I remember vividlythough 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 tothem, coughing it up with monotonous regularity just asthe Newcastle midfieldhad two weeks ago. Nevertheless, in truth Newcastle played prettier football for not much more result - their final third, with Griffiths held back andshadowed 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 onlyintermittant team intelligence,in thelocal gameto proveany pseudo-Platonictruth infootball that may be espouced by those with the mind to. Van Egmond out-thought McKinna on the day, and his strengths lie inhis willingness to adaptto different game situations and change his teamformation 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 seriessolely there to make the FFA money. Fair enough for now, but just make the trains run on time, manage expenditure - andimprove the consistancyof refereeing, please. The referees have become reagents, not solvents in the mix - resulting in reaction, and not as is their role, indistillation.
At least he’s consistent…
Tomorrow, praise for Newcastle, some sort of game analysis from row55AA, 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.