Hopefully Tommy isn’t injured (he went off early yesterday) and it will be great too see Thaj and Oar both playing on Boxing day.

I agree with Mxjosh, too. Bleiberg does seem to be undecided as to how to use not only Tahj, but Culina too. With Tahj it may partly come down the fact that there is no corresponding left winger. Tahj was at his most effective at the Roar playing with Zullo on the other flank and Van D in the middle. The problem at GCU is that when Tahj goes to the touchline, there is no mirror player on the other flank, which means that there is no balance to the formation and instead of stretching the opposing defence, all that happens is the whole unit simply shifts to one side. The end result is that Tahj gets tightly marked and Smeltz ends up with 3 defenders on him. Now if GCU had Zullo on the opposing wing, then that is one less defender on Smeltz and another defender who has to think about covering Zullo’s marker because Zullo and Minniecon will often beat the first man. Bleiberg was chasing Ryan Griffiths, of course, who would have given the team exactly the kind of width balance it is missing now.

F is right next to G on the keyboard so I will guess typo but a clever one!

We miss Doig he is the guy that calls the shots at the back. I say well done to Fold Coast they played very well and we should have done more… the pass from Heff that set up the goal was a good wake up call for us…

Minniecon wasn’t disappointing all game, KB. In flashes he looked very good, but only in flashes. I don’t know what is up with Tahj. Is he injured? His body language isn’t good on the pitch. My hunch is that it is the way he is being used. He is a wide player, at his best coming at speed from the right flank. Bleiberg hasn’t really found a way to use him in this team.

I thought Culina worked so hard in the first half and the game was evenly balanced and both midfields were cancelling each other out… Our back four were at their best again until Simons against the run of play got the breakthrough… Tahj Minniecon was disappointing and he is still not the Tahj of old, being pushed off the ball too easily from a very physical CCM back four and had little or no impact on the game… Finally succumbing to serve cramping coming down in front of us close to the side line…

That allowed young Andrew Barisic to enter the foray with a superb performance showing a good deal of upper strength not being pushed off the ball and charging down the left flank delivering a pin point low cross to Smeltz on the far post who made no mistake to put it away… Andrew Barisic strength gave the team new confidence to attack a tiring CCM coming from deep attacking them with pace…

It was great to witness as luck would have it, the attacks were frequent at the home end of the ground, with the ‘Beach Boys’ in full voice every time a new attack was launched… A tiring CCM defence were on the back foot at last as Andrew Barisic, Smeltz, Zenon, and Culina were constantly charging forward at the rate of knots with the Beach roaring them on… A great finish to the game and watch out for a new GCU’s rising star in Andrew Barisic…

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KB

I guess they expect all 9k of us to go on a rampage or that referees are too sensative to the booing (the later is what would actually happen). Likewise I can’t remember seeing them at Broncos games for high shots and the like.

That should be something on the agenda of that Supporters union.

Good on ‘em – stop putting officials in cotton wool – if they stuff up – they should be told in no uncertain terms – might make them focus a bit more next time!!

It was a pathetic call that could only be described as incompetence.