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Opinion
Central Coast Mariners’ 6-1 humiliation of Melbourne City was a reminder that no matter how incompetent the game’s administration is, football always finds a way to bounce back.
Fresh from watching Adelaide United’s Carl Veart being named Coach of the Year last week, Nick Montgomery made the A-League look stupid once again.
Montgomery was ruled ineligible to win Coach of the Year – which is apparently a ‘best and fairest’ award – after he was sent off for allegedly stepping outside his technical area in a 1-1 draw with Wellington Phoenix last February.
Not to worry. Montgomery put the Australian Professional League’s grinding bureaucratic buffoonery behind him to win the one that really matters with a truly astonishing take-down of the richest club in the league.
And just like every one of the Central Coast’s biggest wins this season, this one was no fluke.
We got an early sense of what was coming in Saturday night’s scintillating grand final when Marco Tulio played in Jason Cummings on the break, only for City goalkeeper Tom Glover and the retreating Curtis Good to do just enough to prevent the opener.
If it was an early warning sign, the grand final ‘hosts’ failed to heed it. The Mariners took the lead on the 20 minute-mark when Cummings kept his cool to convert another quickfire counter-attack at the second attempt.
And they were at it again barely 13 minutes later when Sammy Silvera skipped past a flat-footed Nuno Reis and arrowed his skidding drive straight into the bottom corner.
(Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
It was a classic one-two punch from a team that has attacked from the outset in every finals game this season, yet City responded in kind when Jamie Maclaren set up early substitute Richard van der Venne to volley home five minutes before the break.
And while the premiers looked like they might find a way back into the match when they threw everything at the Mariners after the restart, the complexion of the game changed again when Montgomery introduced substitute Jacob Farrell just after the hour mark.
Brought on to provide some extra physicality at the back, Farrell’s first act was instead to win a penalty when he nipped in ahead of Andrew Nabbout inside the box.
Cummings stepped up to calmly roll the ball into the bottom corner, and he completed his hat-trick – and overtook Daniel McBreen to break the Mariners’ single-season goal-scoring record in the process – with another spot-kick less than three minutes later.
It was no less than a City Football Group that was happy for the APL to sell Grand Final hosting rights to Sydney deserved.
How different would the outcome of the decider have been had City not given up hosting rights and willingly thrown away home-ground advantage?
The Mariners haven’t won at AAMI Park since 2014 and lost to both Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory at the venue this season.
And the City Football Group’s willingness to trade hosting rights for a paycheque came back to haunt them in the most embarrassing fashion when the Mariners turned the screws and added two more goals at the death.
Beni N’Kololo’s header was an absolute peach and no less than the flying Frenchman deserved on the night, while substitute Christian Theoharous almost butchered the chance to score a sixth before the ball ultimately broke to fellow substitute Moresche, allowing the Brazilian to side-step the despairing Good and drill the final goal into the far corner.
The 6-1 annihilation made a mockery of a Melbourne City side that has now lost three out of the last four straight Grand Finals, and provided a timely reminder of what it is that makes the A-League great.
And that’s the football – not the administration.
With man of the match Jason Cummings heading off for a lucrative stint at Indian giants Mohun Bagan, the Mariners couldn’t have given their Edinburgh-born cult hero a better send-off.
And another fractious A-League season got the ending it deserved. Not because of the game’s administrators, but in spite of them.