Alright good people, settle down now. Mark Rudan is leaving at the end of the season. We sorta already knew this news was coming though, right? If he wasn’t willing to shut down the speculation then it meant he was considering it and if he was considering leaving then he was always going to eventually decide that he had to go.
We’ve had a couple days now to contemplate the events of Friday evening. The news breaking about Mark Rudan was one thing, and it’ll get plenty more words as the week progresses, but the performance in Brisbane was unacceptable regardless of whatever else was going on.
It’s been two months since the Ferns polished up their Cup of Nations work in Australia. It’s two more months before they kick off their 2019 World Cup campaign. Things are seriously ramping up right now and Tom Sermanni has been working against the clock from day one so there’s honestly just no time left for stutters or setbacks.
Oh so you thought that Premmy Files was over? Nah mate, plenty more going on even as the season’s come to its glamorous conclusion. The winter club season’s well underway now but Team Wellington and Auckland City still have another few weeks of challenging for silverware as the Champions League hits its latter stages.
In the 18th minute Chris Wood popped up at the far post and get in there, lad! Asmir Begovic came leaping for it from the corner kick but couldn’t get a touch on the ball and Chris Wood basically had an open header from half a yard out. No dramas for that fella. None whatsoever.
Important football fan lesson: never get too far ahead of yourself. Three wins in a row for the Nix… that was something special. Fifteen goals in 270 minutes. But all against teams outside the top six. Travelling to Adelaide was always going to be much tougher task.
People, your patient wait is over. It is time for the second annual Premmy Files Team of the Season. And not just one team either like most jokers, but three teams ranked in order. First team, second team, and third team.
If we’re being honest then the Nix got away lightly on the ol’ injury front until pretty recently. For the longest time it was a couple spare games missed by Filip Kurto in which Oli Sail chipped in brilliantly anyway, and maybe a couple niggles for a couple fringe players that didn’t really affect anything. Suspensions were the bigger problem.
Michael Woud has been staying ready. Since transferring from Sunderland to Willem II last year he’s been making moves in the background, already working his way up to back-up goalie status and even earning a new contract a few weeks back.
The simplest way to judge this game was that if it were going to be an open game then Eastern Suburbs had the advantage. If it was, on the other hand, a tight and cagey matchup… that’d lean towards Team Wellington. It was an open game, at one end anyway, and there was nothing Team Wellington could really do about it.
At the most crucial time of their season, having previously gone four games without a win and seen their playoff probabilities sink into the toss-of-a-coin realm, the Nix have now ripped off three straight wins while scoring fifteen goals in the process.
Okay, so here’s the situation. The Nix are currently sitting pretty in fourth on the A-League ladder after winning their last two games rather handily. Eleven goals in 180 minutes has really done the trick. Playing a couple teams outside the playoff hunt was a boost as well.
It’s really all on the line here. Not just the title but also the second Champions League position for next season. Suburbs would have already qualified had ACFC won through but with the fourth-placed TeeDubs making it this far the winner of this game takes it all and the loser can forget about it.
The Rapids were the only of the kiwi MLS teams to play this week, with Portland and Minnesota both getting a week off. International break and all that jazz. Away to FC Dallas, it only took three minutes before Dominique Badji – who Anthony Hudson traded away last season – got completely unmarked from a corner routine and smacked one off the post.
There are no more promises at this stage of the season. Past results mean little as the entire five months leading up to this point can be wasted away by a single mistake, a single moment of brilliance, and replaced with bitter disappointment. Eighteen games each leading up to it but only the next ninety (to 120) minutes matter anymore.
When the Wellington Phoenix announced that they’d come to a mutual agreement to release defender Dylan Fox from his contract a little over a week ago, at first it appeared to be a squad thing. Sliding an injured player out of the way since he wasn’t going to be able to play again this season and his contract was almost run down anyway.
The journey is almost complete. Eighty-nine games plus an abandoned one in the can and there are just three more to go. We took the first tentative steps along this expedition in the middle of October and here we are five months later about to wrap it all up.
Some pleasant news to wake up to last Wednesday morning. Stefan Marinovic named to start for the Championship clash with bottom of the ladder Ipswich Town. Big Stef with the gloves on. Within a week of earning that contract after a brief trial, right on in there after one game on the bench.
Well, here we are. The regular season is over and our semi-finals are set. Although the final round of the 2018-19 Premiership was overshadowed by the tragedies in Christchurch and, to be honest, the football was not a priority this week.
A while back it looked like the Phoenix’s attack had been figured out. Three goals in six games and they’d sunk all the way back to within one more bad week of falling out of the top six. But then they went and scored eleven goals in three halves of football.