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Joined May 2020
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I'm a student of football - a player, coach, spectator and fan.
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Times might indeed be changing for the better in Australasian football. However, the most important things never change. Matches are still 90 minutes of…
Failure by defenders to track strikers results in more goals than you might think. As the new A-League season kick-off is nearly upon us,…
Analysis of the 2019-20 season showed that a whopping third of all goals were scored because defenders ball watch and fail to track strikers.…
In July I spoke with Ben Sigmund about defending in the A-League. Sigmund was an integral part of the Wellington Phoenix defence for eight…
An admirable 20 matches were played in this short period of twenty days. The break in the season and then the staggered re-start for…
Ben Sigmund was one the most determined defenders to grace the A-League. He played 181 matches for Wellington Phoenix between 2008 and 2016 and…
Can you train for the mental aspect of football? Physical conditioning is a prerequisite for top performance, especially in the sometimes inhospitably hot temperatures…
Don’t meddle in the melee if you don’t need to. Barrie Truman was the coach of the All Whites for 49 matches from 1970.…
There were 18 goals scored in the A-League this round. Failure to track by defenders was implicated in seven of them. One of those…
"E rere ki te tangata" means "fast to the person" in Māori. The Tracker from its New Zealand base acknowledges the Wellington Phoenix for…
The Luminaries, an adaptation of the Man Booker Prize- winning novel by Eleanor Catton, has made it to the small screen. It’s a tale…
Beware the whammo of the double crosses! When our children were little, a catch cry reverberated around the house for many weeks. They repeated…
“Football is not rocket science,” according to Robbie Fowler, coach of Brisbane Roar. I agree. Football is much harder than that. New Zealand’s Rocket…
As a New Zealand writer now publishing here, I wish to begin by acknowledging Australia’s First Peoples, he tangata paora – the people of…
To jbinnie – thanks, yes ball watching is a vague, slippery topic, so hard to pin down. I’ve heard coaches lament about the standard of young players’ football education. Learning well when young is the ideal but I think there are times in a match when even the best and brightest fall into the trap. If ball watching is indeed a “sin”, it is often one of omission which only the sinner knows about. I am an advocate for ALM coaches teaching their players more about this.
To Brainstrust – I agree that ball watching may be only one of many mistakes immediately before a goal is scored. For purposes of clarity I don’t consider other errors in the prelude to the score, as the last defender still has an opportunity to rectify those mistakes. This often happens.
Nor do I analyse own goals. The first goal (an own goal) in the final is a very good case to consider here. It was unfortunate for the defender that this happened. I say good on him for being there and his great effort. He did his best, we can’t ask for more than that. He was a focused defender.
On the second goal scored my main concern was indeed on the Melbourne City defender Carl Jenkinson. I consider that he performed his marking duties extremely well, even touching Western United attacker Aleksandar Prijovic. Jenkinson’s experience in the English Premier League showed because defenders (especially on corners) will even put both their arms around would-be runners. In this ALM final and at this man-marking moment it was extremely difficult for Jenkinson to push up to create an off-side situation. I believe that he did well enough to keep both his man and the ball in view. The ball moved so fast in this dynamic, close quarters situation. Movement triggers movement and with the unfortunate and unpredictable ricochet I considered that in this instance Jenkinson demonstrated focused defending.
The tracker: Ball watching in the A-League 2021-22
Just three short months ago (Friday 3rd December) at WIN Stadium the scoreline read Wellington Phoenix 0 v Western Sydney Wanderers 2. Some days later it was reported that the Nix received an apology from referees’ boss Nathan Magill for two VAR errors made in this match. He said that Video Assistant Referee Kris Griffiths-Jones should have noticed two fouls and referred back to referee Stephen Lucas. At least the referral back was achieved in this instance. Progress?
It was meant to be a week of pride for the A-Leagues, but it has turned to utter embarrassment
Thank you Lionheart. I’m not sure about that one, except to say it looked like the goal-line technology was a fizzer in this instance. Regards Pete.
The Tracker: The sneaky corner in Round 4
In regard to the Sydney v Nix game, Steve Corica’s after match conference was notable for what was said and what was not said. During the short four minutes of the interview Corica stated four times that the goal conceded by Sydney was scored while they had only ten men on the field. My calculation shows this period lasted for less than three minutes! During that time, and before the goal was scored, there were two throw-ins when a substitution could have been made. What was not said concerned the time Sydney themselves played against a depleted team. The Nix played with ten men for 15 minutes and then another 14 minutes with only nine players.
Does the A-League now just favour teams in Sydney and Melbourne?