Chances came with a flurry for Melbourne City, full of confidence after a turn of fortunes had them five wins from five leading into this top-of-the-table NPL2 contest.
They were on top, not only in terms of the play, but also on the scoreboard soon enough via the penalty spot, against the infallible Dandenong Thunder no less.
Christopher Cristaldo fell to the weight of a Faisal Sakhizada tackle, allowing the Melbourne City captain to dispatch the penalty he’d won, (LE)gloveman Fraser Maclaren sent the wrong way with his well disguised spot-kick.
The physicality of the contest ramped up a notch from the Thunder, who hit back with fire in the belly on the stroke of half time, then again five minutes after the break.
A silly foul allowed Kristian Sarkies to dispatch an expert free-kick into the top left corner, while some soft defending on the advancing Daniel Bennett allowed the winger space and time to set up the red-hot Brandon Barnes to brilliantly finish.
“We didn’t want to concede that goal at the end of the first half [had we not] I think that would have changed things. Then early on in the second, we conceded as well,” City manager Joe Palatsides mused.
“We’ve got these lapses at the start and end of every half, and while today we started strongly, at the end of the half, we lapse in concentration just once and they punish us.
We didn’t start off the second half very well, but I was pleased with the way they reacted. At 2-1, we had some great opportunities to draw level, one-on-one opportunities and balls across the face of goal.
“On another day, we could’ve scored four or five, but today we didn’t get it done. We’ll lick our wounds, get back up and learn a lot from today.”
Dandenong went on to seal the tie with a brilliant solo goal from Bennett, which came largely against the run of play, with City finishing the stronger of the two sides.
Sandwiched in between their early and late game dominance however was a thrusting retaliation from the Thunder, with attacks coming in intermittent waves, largely brought on by their physical approach to the game, signalling their ability to ‘outman’ the young bodies of City’s developmental side.
“I think they wanted the challenge, early on in the season we were out-bustled by a lot of teams but I thought that they liked the stigma of playing against the top team,” Palatsides said.
“Seeing that Dandy wanted to beat us and we wanted to beat them, that makes for a good contest. They had to be up for it not only playing wise but also physically.
“This was probably the best game we done physically, in terms of really putting our body on the line and going in for the 50/50 challenges. We’re not going to win them all, we know that, but we learnt a lot for today, which was great.
“They’re a very good team and they’ve got some really quality players, probably the best quality players in the league. If you make one tiny mistake you get punished for it.
“We knew that going in as well, but I was really pleased with the way we controlled the game, and I thought that we had first say in how the game was going to go. For the majority of the first half, I thought they were struggling to keep up with our ball movement an our play, which was really great to see.
“We see these young boys – we had a couple of 16-year-old’s in there – to see them against this physical and good team, it was good to see them step up. I said to them after the game that I was quite pleased with how they played. There’s a transition between being boys and becoming mend and today was a perfect example of it.”
The performance despite the loss was one of immense promise, something that perhaps wasn’t there as they went five games without a win in the early stages of the season.
Palatsides was adamant his side could learn from that patch of poor form, and did so in fine fashion, stringing together a five game winning streak leading into the game with Dandenong, which saw them overtake the competition to lead the league at the commencement of the game week.
With a log jam beginning to build up in the NPL2 West promotion race, Palatsides hasn’t given up hope of a title-tilt, and wants his side to learn from their downfalls this week to drive them forward for the rest of the season.
“We want to keep improving each week. We had a bit of a slump about six weeks ago where we had three losses in a row and a couple of draws, and it was really important that we learnt from each game.
“Since that mid-season slump, we had won five in a row coming into today, so we’ll learn from what we did wrong today and hopefully if we correct that, then we should have a good run to the end of the year.
“We want to see them playing good football first and foremost, and secondly, really being ruthless in the way they play and that’s in being an A-League footballer. Whether they’re 15 or 16 or 18, they have to understand that they play against men here and one mistake is critical.”