Strikers Finish On A High

Sunday 16th Aug, 2009

The Brisbane Strikers closed out their championship-winning 2009 Hyundai QSL season in the style that champions should last night, winning 2-0 in Mareeba over the Far North Queensland Bulls to achieve all of the statistical challenges set for them by their coach while finishing four points ahead of their nearest rivals, Olympic FC.

A goal in each half by Luke Morley produced the scoreline and capped off a focused and professional team performance that ensured the Strikers finished the regular season with a perfect record away from home and an average of less than one goal conceded per game. And in a game in which statistical ambitions ranked high on coach Stuart McLaren’s wish list, he even got an unexpected bonus – the Strikers were awarded their first penalty of the season, which was duly converted by Morley for the opening goal.

The Strikers, who made two changes to their starting eleven from last week with Craig Collins and Jeromy Harris starting in place of the suspended Adam Webber and injured Jonti Richter respectively, were clearly the dominant team in the first half and only inaccurate finishing prevented Bulls goalkeeper Daniel Wilesmith from having a very busy opening forty-five minutes.

Morley was in the action as early as the third minute, driving a shot over Wilesmith’s crossbar after fullback Michael Butters and Steve Unsworth had combined down the Strikers’ right touchline before Unsworth squared the ball to Morley, just inside the Bulls’ penalty area.

Strikers captain Matt Smith missed with a free header from a Chay Hews corner kick and Morley sent a diving header wide of the target from another Hews delivery as the Strikers strove for the opening goal, while the Bulls struggled to get to grips with the speed of their ball movement and the fluency of the passing coming from the Strikers’ midfield contingent of Scott MacNicol, Harris, Chay Hews and Chris Di Sipio.

Indeed, the home side seemed intent on weathering the newly-crowned champions’ storm by getting behind the ball and concentrating as much as possible on keeping their defensive shape, which meant that the visitors had to be patient in possession and industrious in their off-the-ball movement to break them down.

The Bulls seldom threatened early on, but their best moments occurred whenever they were able to get their wingers, George Koroma and Glenn Hurney into the play. But just as the Bulls were threatening to make some inroads down the flanks, the Strikers hit back hard through the centre of the park with a counter-attack in the nineteenth minute that saw MacNicol feed the ball forward to Steve Unsworth. Unsworth’s sharp turn left a defender in his wake before the forward looked up to find a supporting run from, of all people, his captain and central defender Matt Smith, who charged into the Bulls penalty area and was just about to pull the trigger for a shot when he was bundled heavily into the turf by a shove from behind by a Bulls defender. The result was the awarding of the Strikers’ first penalty for the season, which Morley despatched with clinical ease by stroking the ball low to the right of Wilesmith as the Bulls’ custodian dived to his left.

It took the Bulls thirty-eight minutes until they threatened the Strikers’ goal for the first time and, when they did so through a cross from the right wing by Josiah Rusch, it took a desperate defenders’ block to prevent a fiercely-struck shot from Hurney threatening Ryan Pearse’s goal. But it was at the other end that the clear-cut scoring opportunities were being created and Morley, in particular, was finding himself peppering Wilesmith’s goal with shots and headers that, in the main, were going wide of the target.

The teams went into the half time break with the Strikers having fired in nine shots to the Bulls’ one, but also having failed to hit the target at all with the notable exception of Morley’s spot kick. With only a one-goal buffer to show for a dominant performance, it might have entered the minds of the visitors that this fixture was showing startling similarities to the first encounter between the teams when the Strikers had the Bulls on the ropes but could not finish them off.

As if sensing this, the Bulls opened the second half in encouraging fashion. Pearse was soon forced to make his first save of the match, at the feet of David Ruiz, before Ruiz scraped a coat of paint off Pearse’s crossbar with a shot on the turn from twenty yards.

The Strikers hit back with a Hews corner kick that found the head of the shortest player on the pitch, Chris Di Sipio, whose glancing header was cleared off the Bulls’ goal line by a defender. Morley then had a shot deflected by a defender’s boot over the crossbar after a deft turn and pass from Unsworth.

As the match opened up and became an end-to-end contest in which the Bulls gave as good as they got, Hurney blazed a shot high over Pearse’s crossbar after beating two defenders on a determined run, and Pearse made another save – this time at the feet of Hurney – after a ricochet off the boot of substitute Strikers defender Todd Gava fell kindly at the feet of the Bulls winger.

The Strikers looked certainties to extend their lead when Morley, whose energy, speed and enthusiasm was causing the Bulls’ defence all sorts of problems, got away down the left touchine and picked out Unsworth’s run towards the six yard box with an accurate low cross. Unsworth got a solid contact on the ball with his right foot, but Wilesmith guessed the right way and produced an outstanding save from point-blank range to keep his team in the contest.

As the match ebbed and flowed Pearse came off his line to catch a corner kick from the Bulls but failed to hold on to the ball, and a Bulls defender who had ventured forward – probably Alex Plowman – lashed the ball goalwards on the volley only to find Smith’s lunging header deflecting the ball away from the Strikers’ goal with Pearse out of the reckoning.

Pearse made another save at the feet of Ruiz as the Bulls continued to pressure the Strikers’ goal but, as they attacked again, Gava nipped in to win the ball deep in his own half to start the move that led to the match-clinching goal for the Strikers.

Looking up, Gava spotted substitute forward Gareth Musson, who had only just come on for Steve Unsworth, out on the Strikers’ left touchline on half way, and knocked the ball long to him. Musson then turned on the proverbial sixpence to leave a defender on the turf as he tore off towards goal to produce a cross that was met by a defender’s header, only for the ball to loop into the air before coming down near Morley, who swivelled to send a left-footed volley crashing low into Wilesmith’s net from eight yards.

While the second goal did not end the Bulls’ resistance, it gave the Strikers the buffer they needed to calm any remaining fears that the Bulls could wriggle off the hook in the manner that had occurred at Perry Park. The visitors were able to see out the last fifteen minutes of the match without any further genuine scares in front of their own goal, although Pearse did have to get down sharply to his right to hold on to another shot from Hurney, this time from the edge of the eighteen-yard box.

The final whistle was greeted with warm applause from a sizeable home crowd, and with restrained celebrations from the home side, who reserved a more boisterous celebration of their season’s achievement for the visitors’ dressing room - from where a rousing rendition of Queen’s well-worn standard “We Are The Champions” was later belted out.

But prior to his team’s choral exertions, skipper Smith found time for some quiet post-match praise for them.

“Some of the guys left home this morning at four o’clock or half past four in the morning to make the two hour trip up (on the ‘plane), and then the bus up the hill, and it’s such a big effort”, Smith said. Not too many sides have come up here and actually got the win so, if someone had offered me before the game a 2-0 win to us, I’d have taken that any day”.

“I thought we had our best football in the first half. We got the ball down and we passed it. Obviously at half time their manager must have got up them a little bit and they came at us and put more pressure on us and it was a bit more of a battle. But we still created opportunities and that’s how we got the second goal”.

Match statistics:

Far North Queensland Bulls 0 Brisbane Strikers 2 [Morley, 19 (pen), 75].

Shots on goal: Bulls 11, Strikers 16

Shots on target: Bulls 3, Strikers 6

Crosses: Bulls 6, Strikers 12

Accurate crosses: Bulls 0, Strikers 4

Corners: Bulls 7, Strikers 9

Fouls: Bulls 10, Strikers 8

Offsides: Bulls 0, Strikers 4

Yellow cards: Koroma (Bulls), Di Sipio (Strikers)

Red cards: None

Substitutes: Notoras (Bulls); Gava, Johnson, Musson (Strikers)