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Perth Glory will be dreaming of bygone days as they fly to Brisbane to face the Roar in next week’s A-League grand final.
The poster boys of the final NSL years prevailed in a tense penalty shootout at Bluetongue Stadium.
They compounded the recent misery of the Central Coast Mariners, who will be sick to the core at being denied the opportunity to win a coveted first title, and to gain revenge on their northern arch-nemesis after the extraordinary finish to last year’s grand final.
However, it seemed there were a few factors that would on the surface denigrate both the preliminary final and the grand final. One factor came from the host broadcaster, another from the losing coach.
Foxtel deserve rubbishing for their appalling decision to cut away from the broadcast of the Mariners-Glory game as it was about to go to penalties in order to catch the start of the Essendon-Gold Coast AFL game.
For those who were able, the climax to the A-League was available on Viewer’s Choice. However, if you didn’t have that option, or like me, you were recording the match due to another commitment in order to settle down and watch it later in the evening (strenuously avoiding radios or sports updates), it was a slap in the face.
Instead of the penalties, I got the first 10 minutes of the Bombers-Suns game, a nothing contest in comparison to what was happening at Bluetongue.
That’s not meant to start another endless war of words between football and AFL fans, but one was the first ten minutes of a Round 3 match which surely could have been joined in progress, while the other was the climax to the second most important game of the A-League season, balanced on a knife-edge.
The other factor came from a naturally shattered Mariners coach Graeme Arnold. In the post-match press conference, Arnold inadvertantly dropped a hint at where he may be taking his whiteboard and coaching charts next season when he said, “Maybe I should just go to a big club. The small clubs never get the decisions.”
This was in response to Perth Glory’s goal from Shane Smeltz that looked to be offside. Suddenly the decision was all about Arnie.
While not criticising his players this time, the tone was eerily reminiscent of his meltdown at the 2007 Asian Cup when he was Socceroos coach.
There was more to come, when Arnold almost declared the Mariners champions by default, acknowledging that grand finals were the “Australian way” but that where a club finished after 27 rounds was the true test of a champion, and that play-off games were just “cup ties.”
Arnold went on to say that he regards the Mariners next game in the Asian Champions League to be far more important than next week’s grand final, and that qualifying the Mariners for the last 16 of the ACL was higher on his agenda than winning the domestic competition.
It must be tremendously difficult fronting the media in circumstances like that in which Arnold found himself last night. But he should have stopped at the line “the Australian way.”
He may have a lot of sympathisers in regard to how Australian football crowns its champion. He has won a lot of admirers with the way he has turned the Mariners into a league force, punching way above their weight.
But he should not have diminished the importance of the league’s showpiece game, no matter how justifiably bitter he felt.
The host broadcaster had already done enough damage by treating the preliminary final like an a scheduling annoyance.
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