Heart make promising debut but still go down to Mariners
Columnist By Davidde Corran, 6 Aug 2010 Davidde Corran is a Roar Expert
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Melbourne Heart's Michel Beauchamp tackles Daniel McBreen from the Central Coast Mariners. AAP Image/ Joe Castro
So now Melbournians have a choice. Or at least another choice. For five years, the Victory has been the only option for football fans in Melbourne who want to follow a top-flight domestic side. Beyond that, fans were forced out to the Victorian Premier League or home to their TV sets to watch European football.
Ironically, against the Central Coast Mariners on Thursday night, all those elements came together to form the Heart.
There were A-League veterans, Victorian Premier League stars and players with a European pedigree in their starting 11.
Mid-week football is still an uncomfortable prospect for the self-proclaimed sporting capital of Australia (and sometimes the world) so a crowd of 11,050 for a brand new club is a reasonable affair. Even compared with the Victory’s inaugural attendance of just over 17,960 five years ago and their season opener last year of 18,855 also on a Thursday night.
According to Heart backroom staff, the crowd figure was their first victory. A key question now is if they can sustain and then build on that.
Heart’s “brand” of football, a style and point they’ve been keen to make at every opportunity over the last few months, will play a large part in that.
Last night, after a strong start where Heart were able to keep possession easily for the first ten minutes, the Mariners began to press tighter and John Van’t Schip’s men failed to find penetration.
The Mariners were well organised defensively and it was telling that most of the debutants’ best chances came from turnovers rather then build up play.
Despite an increased intensity, and desperation, the Heart failed to find that crucial first goal, with the game ending in a 1-0 win for the Mariners, thanks to a first half header from captain Alex Wilkinson.
As Van’t Schip said in the build up to the game, after only having his full squad together for three weeks, it will take time for the Dutch tactician to imprint his game plan on his players.
A big question will be whether the as yet undecided Melbourne public will be willing to wait.
Worryingly for those who have adopted the A-League’s newest club already, the Heart’s most highly rated players, the experienced Josip Skoko and youthful Eli Bablj, failed to deliver. Though there is still plenty of time left for that to change.
There were also some positives for the Heart though. Despite being 36-years-old Gerald Sibon showed why he’ll be crucial to his side’s ambitions this season and Brazilian forward Alex Terra showed some willing glimpses.
After months of build up and hype the Heart has finally made it’s competitive debut. Unfortunately it only provided teasers, rather then answers to the questions about the long and short-term future of Melbourne’s “second” club.
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August 6th 2010 @ 10:01am
AndyRoo said | August 6th 2010 @ 10:01am | Report comment
If your just expecting them to kick of like the grand final was last week then you would have been disappointed in the game.
It’s not just because the Heart are a new team, you will likely see similar performances from a lot of teams over the next couple of months. The Mariners old pressing style always used to get results in the early season and in the last two seasons they would pick up plenty of points in the first half of the season and then fade away in the second half as the better teams got into their groove.
Compare this opening game to last seasons if you want too see how far the league has come in such a short time. Last year the Mariners were woeful and thuggish and still beat the Victory 2 nil or such and Pip was ready to burn his membership. It was much much better and faster than the opener from last season which left us all (bar Mid) depressed at the time (dog a match, crowd and an injury to Celeski).
This game struggled for fluency but Heart showed enough to me too suggest once they get into their groove they will be a great team. Worm was poor and the only player I would be worried about. They will get better as the season progresses, especially Skoko who once fit could get forward a lot more.
The Mariners have always had a solid defence but I think Arnolds brought in some players that should mean they will have something to offer in the second half of the season when you need to be able to pay football. Before this game I thought he hadn’t done enough to upgrade the attack but I think I have underestimated their players, Simon while opposition fans will hate him looks like he will do well. If I was a Mariners fan I would be feeling pretty good about their season prospects despite their lack of possession.
August 6th 2010 @ 10:33am
jimbo said | August 6th 2010 @ 10:33am | Report comment
A-League attendances up 15% on last year already.
August 6th 2010 @ 10:36am
Art Sapphire said | August 6th 2010 @ 10:36am | Report comment
Went to the game. Great stadium. Good turnout. Encouragingly there were plenty of people in the crowd wearing red.
It was always going to be difficult first game. It was like a nervous first date. Crowd getting to know each other, players getting to know each other. Players and crowd getting to now each other. The interaction in all respects will get better as the season progresses. Heart have two away games coming up and this will definitely test them. Hopefully, by their next home game in Round 4 we will see a bit more fluency in their play.
Eurosnobs make me laugh.
I went to see George Graham’s Arsenal play Liverpool at Highbury in the early nineties.
One of the worst game if football I ever saw.
August 6th 2010 @ 11:18am
Davidde Corran said | August 6th 2010 @ 11:18am | Report comment
I thought it was really interesting that on the way in there was very little red and white around but once everyone got in there was plenty. Merchandise stands must have made a killing.
How different this was to the first Victory game but that’s to be expected. This is a different time, different circumstances and the Heart’s journey will be a more gradual development.
August 6th 2010 @ 1:31pm
General Ashnak said | August 6th 2010 @ 1:31pm | Report comment
It was a bit unfair to have them as the first game of the season and at home.
As for the EPL thing, watching most bottom 6 EPL teams play each other is frankly groan worthy most of the time. For pure viewing entertainment as a neutral spectator the Bundesliga is brilliant. But nothing compares to watching AUFC for me.
August 6th 2010 @ 2:02pm
Kazama said | August 6th 2010 @ 2:02pm | Report comment
“It was a bit unfair to have them as the first game of the season and at home.” – Agree – and to make it a Thursday night match as well and against the Mariners (no offence, but not exactly a high-drawing team for non-Mariners fans) was throwing them well and truly into the deep end. So to get 11,000 was a good result.
“But nothing compares to watching AUFC for me.” – Agree again. It’s always better watching a football match when you have a vested interest in one of the teams. Also watching live football – even if it is ‘only’ the A-League – is a fantastic experience, especially in a stadium like Hindmarsh where you can get really close to the action.
August 6th 2010 @ 2:12pm
General Ashnak said | August 6th 2010 @ 2:12pm | Report comment
5 hours, 36 minutes til kcik off! Like Big Kev: “I’m EXCITED!”
August 6th 2010 @ 2:18pm
Kazama said | August 6th 2010 @ 2:18pm | Report comment
5 hours, 29 minutes… My mind has already left the office and is waiting for me at Hindmarsh
August 6th 2010 @ 10:49am
AndrewM said | August 6th 2010 @ 10:49am | Report comment
Wow.. soo many whiners here.. amazing.. it’s the first game of the fricken season people. Heart have only been together for 3 weeks so no wonder they couldn’t gel together..
How about people like cooter actually comment on the quality of play when we are into the season by at least a month. Has anyone actually watched the first games of the EPL? They are terrible usually. Many mistakes and very sloppy.
Stop watching the highlights of EPL and actually watch teams other than chelsea and man utd!!!
August 6th 2010 @ 11:36am
Ryan said | August 6th 2010 @ 11:36am | Report comment
In the future the FFA should maybe reconsider their opening round scheduling. The Mariners, while always competitive, have traditionally set out to stifle their opponents, and I have great difficulty in recalling a CCM match of great quality, at least in a pure football sense. Their directness (and I’m aware the term is a direct synonym for route one football) in the first half bordered on the ridiculous, while Pedj Boic’s 20 second yellow card summed up their approach. Wouldn’t choosing a better footballing side (think Gold Coast, possibly Sydney) as a first up opponent have guaranteed at least a better spectacle than the fightball dished up last night? Just a thought
August 6th 2010 @ 11:53am
Ben of Phnom Penh said | August 6th 2010 @ 11:53am | Report comment
Personally I’ve been excited by the start of the season and am pleased to see a decent crowd out to support the Heart. The first games are always interesting, if not classic encounters.
I am hardening myself for a week of Midfielder’s rampant optimism following last night’s result
August 6th 2010 @ 12:21pm
Axel V said | August 6th 2010 @ 12:21pm | Report comment
I’m not too sure what alot of people were whinging about. As a neutral I thought it was a really entertaining game, It was high tempo for the whole 90 minutes and had me glued. Lots of quick interpassing, always looking foward, lots of chances that could have been. Not bad for a team that sprung out of nowhere. And the surface of the stadium is absolutely wonderful, now let’s compare that to Etihad! LOL
There were some cheap mistakes by both teams, but that’s what happens in football….you see every team in the world make silly errors, it’s just being human. For the Mariners, they don’t have much to improve on out of that game, luck can only go so far, where as Heart still have alot to improve on.
August 6th 2010 @ 12:56pm
Rellum said | August 6th 2010 @ 12:56pm | Report comment
Went to the game and with all things considered, I will give the Heart a pass mark.
I got to the game early and was very worried about the sparseness of the crowd, but as always things build up rapidly at kick off. It still amazes me how many people show up 25 minutes into a game. 11 thousand ended up a little low for me. Take out a few victory fans and people just wanting to be there for the novelty, but add in all those people who were at training and families who would stay away because of the weeknight and I think averaging 10-13 thousand for the year is very doable.
For me the big test for the heart to earn my support was to follow through on their promise to play a more sophisticated system. And while there was many issues with how they played in this particular game, the intention was there, and to me that was the main thing. They said they were going to play a certain way and they went out and a least made an effort to play that way. I couldn’t have cared less about the result.
For the performance itself, the main failing for me was the movement of the central three and to a lesser extent the wide players. Many a time, epically in the first half, when bring the ball out from the back, the back two had no one to pass too. Credit to the central coast for compressing the space in the centre of the park, and making it difficult for the heart to penetrate through the middle, forcing the play wide. This forced Colosimo into playing so many longs passes out wide with little success. But this is where players like Thompson needed to step up. His movement off the ball was far to static, with Skoko’s focus occupied by his new intimate relationship with Matt Simon, Thompson and Kalmar needed to run those angles, draw defenders with them away from the center. They were slow and predictable. Marrone and Heffernan didn’t overlap much at all, making it easy for the Mariners to mark out the front three. Sibon was class, his touch was fantastic. Some of the passages through him and Terra were very promising of what will come into the future. The switch to a 3-4-3 in the second half to accommodate Babalj seemed to alienate Sibon more that bring Babalj into the game.
The supporters group was quite early on, like Art Sapphire, it is very early in the relationship, if things go well the passion will increase, and more noise will follow. The banner before the start of the game was great.
My only real beef was with Reebok. Surly with the land mark event of a first game of a new club they could have organized a few jerseys to sell. The FFA needs to end its relationship with Reebok as soon as Legally possible.
August 6th 2010 @ 1:08pm
Art Sapphire said | August 6th 2010 @ 1:08pm | Report comment
Good summary Rellum. Both Thompson and Skoko did not look match fit and need more games. This was Kalmar’s first game at this level and he’ll have to be on a steep learning curve if wants to succeed.
To break down sides like the Mariners you need to play at a much higher tempo.
Pity about the sloppy goal Heart conceded.
I am pretty sure Mariners would have settled for a 0-0 draw and the win was a bonus for them.
August 6th 2010 @ 1:46pm
General Ashnak said | August 6th 2010 @ 1:46pm | Report comment
Marrone should have been played as a box to box central midfielder, his roaming play for AUFC was the best part of his game last season.
August 6th 2010 @ 2:21pm
Rellum said | August 6th 2010 @ 2:21pm | Report comment
A bit more work on the training park will start to sort this out. I would love to see Taseski giving a run as well.
August 6th 2010 @ 2:26pm
Art Sapphire said | August 6th 2010 @ 2:26pm | Report comment
Marrone did look more comfortable when he moved to the middle of the park later in the 2nd half, General.
He also looked a bit lost defending the corner which led to the goal.
August 6th 2010 @ 3:27pm
General Ashnak said | August 6th 2010 @ 3:27pm | Report comment
Not his strength at all, he looks OK as a RB (Mullen is better), looks good as a RW (though Leckie is better), looks bloody brilliant as a transitional CM. He can move the ball out of defence into offense very well, should have been used to link with Skoko and take advantage of Simon being told to get intimate with Skoko.
August 6th 2010 @ 3:54pm
Aka said | August 6th 2010 @ 3:54pm | Report comment
I thought Kalmar looked ok. And not too sure about Sibon looked a bit lazy and disinterested in the first half.
August 6th 2010 @ 12:57pm
Art Sapphire said | August 6th 2010 @ 12:57pm | Report comment
The other score from last night ABC 774 Melbourne 1 – 1116 SEN 0.
Another comprehensive defeat to SEN.
Well done Aunty for broadcasting the game last night.
There is only one true sports radio broadcaster in Melbourne.
August 6th 2010 @ 1:04pm
Rellum said | August 6th 2010 @ 1:04pm | Report comment
Didn’t SEN digital broadcast the game last night?
August 6th 2010 @ 1:22pm
Art Sapphire said | August 6th 2010 @ 1:22pm | Report comment
Rellum – Don’t know, I doubt it. I did not hear SEN advertise it that evening as I was driving to the ground.
But it really is beside the point.
How many people own a digital radio? How many people have digital radio in their cars?
How many people carry a digital radio to the game?
August 6th 2010 @ 1:32pm
Rellum said | August 6th 2010 @ 1:32pm | Report comment
This is from the A-League website.
“Live and exclusive broadcast on FOX Sports 3, FS3 HD & delayed on Sky Sports 1. Hyundai A-League club broadcast partner is 774 ABC (Melbourne), SEN Digital and 96.3 Coast FM (Gosford). To purchase tickets visit http://www.ticketek.com.au”
http://www.a-league.com.au/default.aspx?s=newsdisplay&id=34500
Yes people don’t much about digital radio, but at least they broadcast it in some form. It is an improvement from SEN.
August 6th 2010 @ 1:06pm
General Ashnak said | August 6th 2010 @ 1:06pm | Report comment
I always find myself laughing out loud whenever the HAL is compared to established leagues with massive pedigrees and individual players earning more than the entire salasry cap of our league. To put down our league as woeful because it is not the EPL, Serie A, Bundesliga etc is pitiful. Essentially you think thaty 99% off all leagues in the world should shut down because they are not as good as the top 5 leagues in the world. Get over your cringe and go watch a entire season of your local team and you will see just how good local football is.