Strikers, and Perry Park, Ready For Big Occasion

Wednesday 9th Sep, 2009

Anyone with so much as a drop of football blood in their veins who happened to drive past Perry Park on Wednesday would surely have felt at least a tingle of anticipation. Standing starkly out from the surrounding bitumened streets and timber houses of Bowen Hills in the dazzling, clear light of a beautiful early spring afternoon, the playing surface virtually shone in an iridescent green that is, for this late stage of a Brisbane football season, almost surreal. It looked, as people say, ‘a picture’ – an ideal setting for a grand final.

Which, of course, is exactly what it will be on Saturday night at 7.00 pm when the Brisbane Strikers host the Redlands City Devils in the 2009 Hyundai QSL Grand Final. It was also the setting for last year’s Grand Final between the Strikers and the Sunshine Coast Fire, but the playing surface was hardly recognisable today as the same brownish, uneven and rather tired surface that had simply withered under the onslaught of too much football and not enough rain last winter.

According to Strikers coach Stuart McLaren, this augurs well for a better football spectacle than spectators got when the Fire beat the Strikers 1-0 in a final that struggled to live up to expectations in 2008.

“It is as good as it’s been at this time of year for a long time”, McLaren said of the treasured turf. “I think the quality of the surface and the dimensions of the surface will allow both teams to get the ball down and play a very good passing game. Obviously, the closing down and the physical element of the game, and battling for possession and battling for the right to get shots on goal, will always be part of the game. But I think we should see a good footballing match because of (the surface).

“I’m hoping as well that the evening kick off suits us perhaps a little bit better than last year, when we had an early afternoon kick-off in August that brought the wind into the equation. That’s nowhere near a reason or an excuse for not winning last year, but it didn’t suit our style – didn’t suit our strengths. There’s no doubt that we were well and truly beaten in last year’s Grand Final, but hopefully we can use that in some small way as motivation and, as I say, the conditions on Saturday night are more conducive to our strengths and give us a better chance”.

There can be no doubt that the Strikers will be fuelled at least partly by a desire to erase the memories of defeat last year. Twelve of the current squad of nineteen players were in last year’s squad and several – including Craig Collins and Michael Butters, were also involved in the previous final contested by the Strikers in 2007 - the rollercoaster 4-5 loss to the Rochedale Rovers in the Brisbane Premier League. But while he understands and acknowledges the role that emotion often plays in football, McLaren said he did not subscribe to the popular theory that you have to experience losing a Grand Final before you can win one.

“That’s probably something that, I suppose, is borne out of people that maybe did lose one and it helped them maybe feel a little bit better about it”, McLaren said. “Having lost one or two as a player and obviously one last year as a coach, I can’t really agree with that. It just feels horrible to get beat in a one-off final. But if it happens to ring true this year I’ll have no complaints”.

McLaren was more inclined to believe another oft-repeated line that there is no substitute in big games for experience. And it is in this area that he believes his squad – which includes several players, such as Chay Hews, Jeromy Harris and Warren Moon, who have achieved in big games at national league level - might just have a winning edge over the less experienced Redlands outfit.

“I think it’s certainly something that’s a positive”, McLaren said. “When you talk about experience it’s just a case of players having been through these types of situation before, or many times before, so you imagine that they might be better equipped to deal with whatever pressures the game itself may bring.

“(But) it’s not always the case. You might have a young player, playing his first season at a certain level or in a similar situation who mentally isn’t affected by pressure or just happens to be good enough, or in a good patch of form, and goes out there and plays the best game of his life. So while it’s good to have experience on your side, it’s not everything. But it’s certainly a positive that we’ve relied upon and I think it’s helped to earn us plenty of points throughout the year. Hopefully it will contribute towards a Grand Final victory on Saturday”.

While the Strikers earned their Grand Final berth by beating Olympic FC 3-2 at Perry Park a fortnight ago, the Devils did it via visits to Kawana and Goodwin Park to beat the Sunshine Coast and Olympic in successive weeks. They will be a battle-hardened, fit unit by the time they take the field on Saturday night but, all things considered, McLaren said he felt the fortnight between competitive games for his team would be a blessing rather than a curse.

“A hundred and twenty minutes (against Olympic) was taxing”, McLaren said. “But we’d already booked in to play a friendly against Gold Coast, which I was happy to still do, on the Wednesday night following the semi-final, because we had a number of players that hadn’t played the full extra time and needed a run.

“We had a few minor niggles and a couple of illnesses that came out of the Saturday and the Wednesday, so the little extra break has given us the time to shake those things off, thankfully, and it has allowed us to have a full, solid week of training rather than in the early part dealing with recovery and at the end of the week trying to not to do too much”.

With the Strikers unbeaten in four clashes with the Devils, having won three and drawn one, and the Devils having finished the regular season in fourth place on the league table while the Strikers won the championship, the Devils will definitely enter the Grand Final as underdogs.

McLaren has watched his team play the Devils twice this year, including the controversial 0-0 draw at Perry Park in July when the Strikers finished with only eight men after Collins, Moon and Luke Morley were sent off, and he also watched the Devils last Sunday when they beat Olympic 1-0. He was impressed by their esprit de corps.

“The thing that stuck out the most for me, having had a bit of time to reflect on the game I watched and also the result against the Sunny Coast, is that they’ve got a bit of a cause to fight for and you can see there’s a real togetherness in the group”, McLaren said. “They are all rolling up their sleeves and working hard for each other.

“But I didn’t get any inkling that that wasn’t the case when they played against us in the two games this year. They were a good team that worked together as a unit. Everybody worked hard - there were no weaknesses in that area. So we are expecting them to come here and put up a very big fight and we know that they’ve got some quality there that can hurt us, so we’ll have to deal with it”.

McLaren is not, however, shying away from the fact that his team will carry the tag of favourites – which is not always a comfortable thing to carry into a one-off match. But he said he was confident, based on how they have handled the ‘burden of expectation’ throughout the season, that they could do so successfully again on Saturday.

“Whether we like it or not, people seem to want to acknowledge that we’ve got some good players here, and quite a few of them’, McLaren said. “But that is a motivating factor for other teams to come here and say, well, ‘we can be as good as them or better’.

“So we have always worked on making sure that we match people’s enthusiasm, work rate and desire and hopefully that little bit of difference that we have in quality will win out in the game – and more often than not that has proved to be the case.

“I don’t think anybody could accuse our players of being complacent, or over-confident or not working hard enough at any stage throughout the season. It’s a case of sticking to what has worked for us, just repeating it one more time and hopefully it has the desired effect”.