I think coaches need to realise that just because they have 5 subs, doesn’t mean that have to use them. If the team is gelling, and there is no reason (fatigue, injury, tactical) to change it…….then dont. All these players should be able to run out an entire match, not just the CBs and O’Shey.

A good response. I think it would also be prudent for the refs to bring back those start of the game team talks. Remember in the good old days when we lined up at the half way with the other team, walked on together and the ref addressed us all as human beings. They would take that opportunity to be very clear on the behaviour they expect from the players and also how they plan to behave in return. A simple conversation at the start of the game like that would make it very clear what the ref deems as dissent, who and how players might address them in the game, and what they deem cautionable offences. When did we stop this practice?

I was ref. I refed from the age of 15 until I was 21 (granted that was almost 20 years ago). I have spoken with my son about how he spoke to the ref, but as a 15 year old kid that was “wrestled” off the ball (kudos for him not simply going to ground and “milking” the free kick), I believe his reaction was not justified, but understandable. I agree with Stuart, I dont not think what he said was dissent. If he had rephrased asking for the foul ie “where is the foul”, or “come on ref, he has me around the waist”….possibly a different outcome. But the yellow card should have been enough for the ref to stamp his authority, show my boy that he will not accept being spoken to like that, and made it very clear he will not tolerate it again. IFAB say “Dissent: Public protest or disagreement (verbal and/or physical) with a match official’s decision; punishable by a caution (yellow card)”. This is dangerous ground. If they introduce this Blue Card, they will ned to be very specific as to describing what can and cant be said. I for one do not want to see players sent from the field simply because the shake their heads in “disagreement” as a refs decision.

FQ have also already put this in place. I know, because my son was given a yellow card and sent for the final 10mins of his game (u15 league 1) this week end. After being grabbed around the waist and thrown off the ball, he turned to the ref and called ” use your whistle ref”. The ref did not even bat an eye. Pulled out the yellow and sent him off the pitch. No one could understand what had happened. Not even the clubs ground officials (we were playing away) understood why he was sent off?? So I jumped online only to see that FQ introduced a 10 min sin bin back in 2020. Who knew??? I would also ask if what he said constitutes dissent?? Perhaps a conversation for another time. But it does beg the question, what exactly will a player have to say or do to get blue carded?

This has always been an issue for Bne. But I would think there is no money for that type of advertising. I would also suggest (based on the new revelations coming out of the APL shenanigans at the moment) that what little money the Roar have, they would be spending it on advertising directly to fans that are already interested or have been in the past ie social media. Most of APL’s big issues revolve around the fact that they neglected the football fans they had and wasted money trying to convince (very poorly) others to come. It is far cheaper to keep a client then to land a new one. I reckon Kaz and Zac are still prioritising just keeping the lights on. As they should be this season.

Bad reputations are hard to shake. It will take time and more than one good season to bring everyone back. If the current trend is going up, when prior to covid it was going down, then that is a good sign.

I think Jelicic and Hore’s movement is creating space now for Tommy. I would hate to be a CB trying to keep track of those two boys. If you added Rojas to that pair, all CB’s are going to be chasing their tails leaving young Tommy plenty of space to hammer home a few winners.

Just imagine the concerts they could schedule in a stadium like that!

So what is the answer? More A League Clubs? NST? DO players need to do the same as young Volpato and make that very early move at 16? (I understand his story is a different one to Joe’s). Just knuckle down at club and “hope” for the best? Or is it just a matter of the players will and commitment to the “pathway”? ( of which most of the time we are walking it blind and hoping we dont go off the cliff). I have a son (well three) playing u15 League 1 in Brissy, also involved in the FQ academy (old TSP program), and it does make it difficult to make the right decisions and take the right steps give him the best chance of pursuing his dream, knowing that the pros were passing on players like Joe. It is no wonder he was thinking of quitting. With A League clubs passing over what was clearly a very promising talent in Joe at that crucial age where the kids are making decisions as to whether to give up or double down, surely we are missing some amazing talent.

The fact that again, two other A League clubs turned him down and could not see his ability and potential worries me. What is doing with our talent identification? This seems to be a common story in Aus. Gauci is not the only one in recent times. Why are our football “decision makers” not identifying these players. Is it still just a case of who you know, not what you know? Are they looking at the wrong indicators? Are the top clubs not communicating with the Grass root elite (ie: NPL clubs) on their players? I know what I think it is, but I would really keen to hear what you think SS.

I agree. Is this an actual article or perhaps the author is fishing for some kind of strategic consultant position at the Wanderers?? What the Author is describing is the general reality of home and away fixtures. I find it laughable that “Travel Fatigue” is mentioned for a Sydney team with essentially 2 of every 3 matches they play in the season within driving distance to their own homes.

I liked the way Indonesia played, who was their coach?? Having said that, their attacking style saw them go down by 4 in the end.

I feel if he defended from the front third it would have been a disaster. That attacking line for Sth Korea was rapid and talented. All they would have required against a higher back line was a few well played balls, and we would have gone down by a lot more. We didnt have had the pace in our back line to compete. That is why Sth Korea struggled like us in the the previous matches. Teams that park the bus…Sorry “Low Block” dont allow for fast attacking teams to get in behind. Hence why Australia has had luck against better opposition. Leckie, and Duke were both lightning quick. As soon as that space closes down with the deep defence, we have no strike power.

Agree Lion! And I would also add that a point against top of the table when your team has been struggling all year, and against the team that walloped you last match was a great result, however they got it.

With some of modern footballs terribly mundane tactics on display in the game it was great to see Rojas come on, make forward runs, and run at players. It was also refreshing to have a WB getting the ball forward and delivering a good old fashioned QUALITY cross into the box. I was suspect on Coreys return, but I have to hand it too him, the boy knows how to whip in a cross.

Waz ” How Germaine stayed in the field is the big question for me”. Same way Davilla stayed on the pitch after putting his hands round the throat of Trewin (I think) a few weeks ago and didn’t even get a caution…

I would have thought Rudan would know the rules by know. I posted about this last week in regards to the reds handed out to a few players. The Law does not mention anything about “STUDS UP”. The language is clear. “Careless” tackle is a foul. “Reckless” tackle is caution and again the magic words for a red card is “Excessive force” that endangers a player. Looking at that challenge I feel it was the epitome of Excessive force. Full speed through the back of the legs could have easy snapped them. A good call by the ref. Also, I suppose when 2 Sydney teams play each other, they don’t notice the Sydney bias they get in any other match from interstate as two Sydney bias teams cancel each other out….. I jest of course…… We all know Sydney teams are treated the same as all other teams by the APL in the A League………..

So true….lol. Which alwats baffled me as the LB’s job was to target what usually is the best player on the opposition, their Right Wing or striker?????? That was always where you “hid” the new bloke you brought from work who has always played rugby but has changed sports as he realised he cant play League on the weekend and be in good enough shape to face work on Monday as 30 yr old. At which point he always comments…. “that was awesome, such a fast physical game. I didn’t realised how much skill and physicality was involved. Can I play striker next week?”.

The full back position is in my opinion the hardest on the pitch, and the one that requires the most tactical flexibility depending on what the coach is asking the team to do. I think in the “old days” the job was a far simpler one and Full Backs always saw themselves as defenders first. Today they are required to be wingers one game, CDMs in another (inverted), part of a makeshift back 3 in another game. Be adept at beating players as well as stopping them, run for 90 mins the full length of the pitch, Overlap when attacking but also make sure they are in place when the attack pitters out and the counter attack is on against them. A very hard role especially when the manager is clearly not communicating well how he wants his team to play, changes tactics/ formations game to game or mid game, or employs tactics that require weeks of training and drilling on the pitch to ensure everyone knows their role.

That is what friendlies are for.

What I don’t get is how the refs (on the pitch or behind VAR) are so bad at interpreting the law. Now I am not a ref, and I am happy for any refs out there to correct me here, but law 12 states “A player, substitute or substituted player who commits any of the following offences is sent off: ……..(other non related offences)….serious foul play.” It then goes on to describe serious foul play.

“A tackle or challenge that endangers the safety of an opponent or uses excessive force or brutality must be sanctioned as serious foul play.

Any player who lunges at an opponent in challenging for the ball from the front, from the side or from behind using one or both legs, with excessive force or endangers the safety of an opponent is guilty of serious foul play.”

Please note, there is no mention of studs up, or standing on a player, only contextual descriptions explaining that the intent of the law is to protect players from “excessive force, endangering player safety, or brutality”.

Further more they define key words like “Careless”, which does not require a booking. “Reckless”, which would sanction a yellow. And again that magic phrase “excessive force”, which warrants a send off.

So really the VAR has the luxury of watching in real time, slowing down the incident to clearly determine the contact, then make a contextual judgment as to whether the three magic phrases above apply, regardless of whether the studs were showing, or the player stood on the opposition. O’Shey, while clumsy and possibly reckless did not challenge with excessive force. I would also argue the same with wood. Reckless and clumsy perhaps, but excessive force??

This seems to be another law that people are applying old variations, spreading wrong information, or are just to blinded to accept. (The other being handball). Are the Aussie refs applying g the official IFAB rules or not. Me thinks not.

Disagree. The whole point of VAR is to correct difficult or wrong decisions. If VAR doesn’t contribute “perfection” in decisions, then there is no point in having it, we may as well just live and die by the imperfect decision made by the pitch ref.

Plenty of opportunity to play lower ranked teams yes, but always in a WC qualifying context. As I said above, that is not the time you introduce new formations, lineups and tactics. That is when playing ugly football to get a result is acceptable in my view. But as always with Arnie, he has no plan B. He plays pragmatic, defensive, Blackfoot football and has no answers when presented with a situation that requires a different approach. I would add though that I feel his player selections were good in the first few games based on his style. They dominated first halves and kept a clean sheet allowing the subs in the second to go out and do what subs should do and change the game.

Yeah, I think the preparation for a WC should be against as many top ranked teams to prepare for the lower possession we will have at a tournament like that. And I should also so that I did enjoy those games vs Argentina, England and Mexico. A bit of a boost the our collective ego to have teams of that calibre see us as a worth while team to play against.

I have commented on this in other articles. We have played all our best football in recent times (under Arnie) when we did not have the ball. As when we have it, we do not know how to use it. The world cup was successful because every other team dominated us in possession. We dig in (channelling that great Aussie Battler mentality and pride that GA thinks is unique to Australia) and hit on the counter securing a few valuable wins in opportune times. Post the WC FA dropped the ball in organising our next few friendlies against tough teams where we again lined up in a low block of 4 4 2, and hit on the counter. We gained/ learned nothing playing England, Mexico and Argentina in the wake of the WC and in our lead up and preparation for AFC. Those games should have been organised against lower ranked nations in preparation for the possession style game we would need to be able to play at AFC. W knew we would have all the possession and our opponents were predictably going to play us the way we play Argentina, or England or Denmark….. (on a separate point, why when we stifle Argentina and go down by one goal, do we deem it amazing football against a great team, but when a lower ranked team does it to us, we dismiss their quality effort and put it down to a poor performance by our boys??) The boys have very little experience other than New Zealand (an excellent team for us to play and work on attacking combinations against an organised and determined quality team) two WC qualifiers in Bangladesh (this was always going to be a washout) and Palestine (who we could only get 1 goal against proving my point) where the result is more inportant than the play and it is not time to work on formations, player selection and tactics. Then Bahrain on the eve of the tournament where you have already done all your preparation and it is too late to tinker with the formula. Our boys as a team do not know how to hold possession and break down a stubborn defence because Arnie and the FA have not prepared them for it.