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A controversial late penalty has seen Gold Coast United win their first M1 Derby in two years to continue Brisbane Roar’s stunning fall from grace.
The Coast leapt off the bottom of the A-League table with the 1-0 Boxing Day victory at Skilled Park as their arch-rivals slumped to a club record fifth-straight loss.
It is an amazing turnaround for the competition’s defending premiers who celebrated an Australian record undefeated streak of 36 matches just a month ago.
After four losses in the past three weeks it looked as though Brisbane were set to end their losing run with the match deadlocked until the 88th minute.
But more heartbreak struck when United were awarded a contentious penalty.
Roar replacement Rocky Visconte fouled danger man Ben Halloran on the edge of the 18-yard box and Daniel Severino stepped up to slot home the winner.
Roar players remonstrated wildly with referee Kris Griffiths-Jones as Visconte was outside the box when he fouled man-of-the-match Halloran, who was on the line marking.
It wasn’t the only controversy of the night as crowd dramas once again reared their ugly head at Robina.
Despite drawing its best crowd of the A-League season of 6927, more than a thousand fans missed the start of the game and many were still forced to wait until halftime to make it in.
The huge walk-up crowd, with lines meandering back 100 metres, caught out officials with only a limited number of ticket booths open to the general public as per the club’s usual cost-cutting practice.
It tarnished the Gold Coast’s best attendance since January when a club record 14,783 responded kindly to United owner Clive Palmer throwing the gates open following an outcry over his controversial crowd cap of 5000.
And there was trouble inside the stands as well with four orange flares set off among the Roar’s packed section of travelling supporters.
Two were thrown on to the pitch, including one in the second half that rested next to the Coast’s goals, but it was only when the third was let off after half an hour of play that police took any action and evicted the culprit.
At that point the action off the field had been more captivating than that on it as neither side looked threatening.
It seemed to be the cue for the encounter to heat up as both sides created clear chances before the Roar went into halftime with all the running.
Brisbane striker Kofi Danning continued the momentum just after the break when a powerful strike forced a fumble from young keeper Jerrad Tyson but it then swung wildly back the Coast’s way.
The home side hit the Roar’s woodwork twice in five minutes with Ben Halloran striking the cross-bar before Dutch striker Maceo Righters’ angled shot collected the upright.
A total of nine bookings highlighted the feeling in the M1 Derby, the first won by the Coast since Boxing Day 2009.
Roar coach Ange Postecoglou felt Visconte was unlucky to fall victim to the game-breaking call but was diplomatic about Griffiths-Jones’ decision.
“It looked outside (the box) but the referee made the call. You would like to think he was 100 per cent certain. It was a big decision,” he said.
“But I can’t really tell from where I was.”
A defiant Postecoglou rated the Roar’s performance as decent and was bemused when one radio reporter asked whether they were now the A-League’s easybeats.
“We were OK. We’re just lacking a cutting edge in the front third and at the moment we can’t score goals. If you can’t score goals you can’t win games,” he said.
The main downside for Gold Coast, who leapfrog Adelaide into ninth place, was the early loss of Dylan Macallister with a strained hamstring that will sideline him for at least a fortnight.
But they will also lose Paul Beekmans with an automatic one-game suspension for his fifth yellow card of the season.
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