The Premmy Files – Round 18
The final round of the Premiership regular season was a farewell tour for some and a matter of convenience for others. Auckland City wasted no time in taking care of the Wellington Phoenix reserves to clinch top spot on the ladder and automatic qualification to next year’s Oceania Champions League (regardless of how they go in the semis/final) but not before Eastern Suburbs buggered it up late against Canterbury United, the Dragons scoring a couple late ones for some semi-final relief… that relief being avoiding Auckland City. But they still have to go to the capital to face Team Wellington after they flicked away Hamilton Wanderers. Oh and two other games happened!
Auckland City first because they finished first after they breezed past the young Welly Nix, as expected. Not a bad Wee Nix side as it happens but a decent Wee Nix < a decent Auckland City XI. Their frontline of Logan Rogerson, James McGarry and Monty Patterson can compete with most but there was only so much they could do when their midfield and defence was pushed so far back by the City lads doing their usual thing. Rogerson and Patterson in particular are capable of slicing through a defence with their speed but getting the ball to them proved difficult short of long balls which take away the precision needed to get that first step ahead.
Most of the best stuff the Nix did still came through Rogerson though. McGarry was quite often forced to drop deeper and ended up playing most of the second half at left wingback, while Patterson has a great determination to beat players… but tends to end up getting tackled. It’s hard for those three, any time any of them got it they were all alone while eight City players swarmed back, won the ball, and resumed their incessant attacking possession.
Plus the Phoenix weren’t helped by the Under 17s tourney going on in Auckland at the time, with a trio of their dudes inexplicably playing for Wellington United there instead of for Wellington Phoenix here. Willem Ebbinge was probably the biggest loss. Welly Utd ended up winning the trophy on penalties (over Western Springs, whose Sutton Park was hosting the event) and Ebbinge mentioned some things on the telly about exposure as a player in front of a lot of coaches and scouts… but that’s supposed to be better exposure than playing for a professional outfit against the top team in the Premmy? Yeah, can’t really vibe with that logic, to be honest.
It was close for all of five minutes and then ACFC lengthened the strides. Emiliano Tade hit the post and then Callum McCowatt and Micah Lea’alafa each missed chances they should have scored. When the goal finally did come it was from a Wee Nix error. A couple chances to clear the ball were wasted and Fabricio Tavano made a nice block to keep the ball in a dangerous area before Lea’alafa slipped it to Tade who slipped it into the net. Before half-time arrived he’d scored another one because that’s what Emiliano Tade does and it’s irrelevant that he’d gone five Premmy games without one because he’s Emiliano Tade. The little drop of the shoulder before he shot that sent two Nix defenders sliding past him was Pure Tade. The finish that he smashed into the roof of the net was Pure Tade. The Golden Boot that he claimed with 16 strikes for the season is Pure Tade.
The Phoenix were a little better in the second 45 but they didn’t often look like scoring and you’d have to say that the extra possession they managed had as much to do with City sitting off and playing it safe than anything else. This was the only game this weekend without a late goal, although City might well have added a couple more on another day. Ollie Sail had a good game in goal and there was some poor finishing too.
Of course, with City’s defensive record the game may as well have been over at 1-0. By keeping things clean into the 83rd minute of the game they got to raise the bat for a thousand in a row without conceding in all competitions. 1008 now all up heading into the semis. Eleven clean sheets in a row and eight of them in a row in the Premiership – 828 minutes of domestic football without conceding. Enaut Zubikarai and those golden gloves, baby. The last player to score past him was Ben Wade for Southern United and that was on January 13. A thousand and eight minutes is heaps but how about two entire months? How about both? Utterly insane. 2-0 the final score.
Speaking of Southern United, let’s do them next. Heaps to celebrate in the Deep South because for the second week in a row they won 3-1, last time against Hamilton Wanderers and this time against Hawke’s Bay United. Garbhan Coughlan was the hero as he scored a hatty before Sam De St. Croix pulled one back late for the Bay. Two of Coughers goals came from the penalty spot but that’s all good. Takes his season tally up to eight, two ahead of teammate Danny Furlong.
Completely contrasting ends to things for Southern and HBU. Hawke’s Bay lost four of their final five games and everything went pretty sour after their great start to the new term. Eight points from four games to begin and then only 11 points from their remaining 14 games. It started tough and yet Brett Angell still somehow carved a quality team despite a heap of player turnover but then they lost the likes of Hayden McHenery, Adam Thurston and Kohei Matsumoto along the way and it was an uphill slog. Didn’t get a whole lot of consistency up front either although there’s a lot to like in some of their younger kiwi talent, guys like Alex Palezevic and Birhanu Taye (each of whom started every game) and Tinashe Marowa. Comprehensive and commanding effort from Bill Robertson and Graham Craven (who missed the last three games) at the back too. They were often a lot better than that eight placed finish.
As for Southern, the party is probably still raging. Six wins, six draws and six defeats made for a dead even campaign and, coupled with the Tasman result, it was enough to earn a fifth place settlement and thus Top Half Status coming off the wooden spoon a year ago. Paul O’Reilly has to be right up there in the coach of the year stakes. There was a real dull period in the middle when they went seven without a win but then they fair stormed home with three wins in a row, scoring 10 goals and conceding only two. All against the bottom three sides but that’s just the luck of the draw. Hey and because they polished things off on a Saturday they got to do it on Saint Patrick’s Day. Mate, crank up that old Pogues record because the Guinness will have been flowing like a river on the way back to Dunedin.
Beautiful. Waitakere and Tasman also closed their seasons with a mostly meaningless clash but just as Southern found a little grace at the end, so did the Waitaks. Nine games without a win and they’d tumbled from being a team in playoff contention to a team that were lucky to finish seventh. Head to head splits over HBU got the job done there.
Ryan Cain bagged a hatty in the first half vs Tassie. Nice way to close it for a bloke who’d scored once in his 14 games prior. That’s because he mostly had to play as a fullback along the way but he ended up back as a striker after Keegan Linderboom left. Good on Ryan, although Maksym Kowal also scored in the middle of that to make it 3-1 at the break. BTW, Cain’s third came from the spot. Good old Tassie keeping up the trends.
The news emerged earlier in the week that Paul Ifill was leaning towards retiring from footy at this level. Sad to think that Saint Paul may never lace up the boots on NZ telly again. He’s been a legend from the moment he arrived on kiwi shores. It’s been an honour, chief, an honour to be able to cheer for those jinking runs and those ferocious strikes. Plus the guy’s going out in good form with a dozen goals this Premmy season good for second behind Tade in the standings. Once Tade scored two the day before, Ifill needed five to beat him. He didn’t get one. But Matt Tod-Smith did, making it 3-2 soon after the game resumed and then his fellow young gun Callan Elliot also slotted one and, bloody hell, it was 3-3 all of a sudden!
Tasman released a couple of their fringe dudes to play for Nelson Suburbs this week which meant some kids on the bench, including high schooler Tullamore MacFadyen (what a handle!) who got out there off the bench. Tully previously spent some time in the Wellington Phoenix Academy. Waitakere also made a couple changes, most notably was Andre Estay finally getting his first start after at least nine subs appearances throughout the campaign (bit hard to keep up with the subs given some of these sloppy twitter accounts). Estay responded by winning the penalty for the third goal. Meanwhile the rest of his team responded to being dragged back by scoring two late ones to finally earn another win, 5-3. Nic Zambrano scored with ten minutes left and then Dylan Manickum added another in injury time. Hell of a game, that one.
Things were lovely for Eastern Suburbs when Derek Tieku gave them the lead from the penalty spot inside ten minutes against Canterbury United. A win here would’ve set them up nicely with a semi-final against Team Wellington, a team that they’ve done the double over this season. No Tim Payne here through suspension, which meant Jordan Vale took the armband, but with his All Whites call-up he won’t be playing next week either so good preparation.
Suburbs are dealing with a couple key players missing (Andre De Jong as well, of course) but Canterbury Utd willingly went into this game undermanned. Willy Gerdsen balanced the ledgers and decided that risking a worse tie in the semis is better than risking not having their best players there and so Stephen Hoyle, Gary Ogilvie and Luke Tongue were all rested to avoid getting that last yellow card that’d mean a suspension (plus Sean Liddicoat was hurt and George King was already suspended) which is why the Dragons’ lineup looked about as unfamiliar as the great aunt whose will asks that you spend a night in her haunted mansion before you inherit it.
Suburbs played from in front most of the way but were never comfortable and with only three minutes left teenager Jacob Richards broke through the defence and levelled us up, dramatically. Richards then turned provider with a free kick that he whipped in to Francis de Vries for the winner in injury time. That, as they say, escalated quickly. But we weren’t even done because all that frustration must have boiled over for Moses Dyer as he picked up a second yellow right at the end, the second time in a month that he’s seen red for a needless foul in injury time. Hard to excuse that kinda thing, unfortunately, and he’ll now miss the semi-final. Safe to say that Danny Hay has every right to be pissed.
That makes it seven games unbeaten with six wins to close the regular season for the Dragons, who hit the semis in some red hot shape. A couple players to come back into that team and bingo. They almost snuck a home semi as well. If Team Wellington had stumbled against Hamilton Wanderers then it’d be Canterbury hosting them, rather than the other way around. Didn’t sound likely… it sounded even less likely when Andy Bevin and Jack-Henry Sinclair (the latter from the spot – four of the five games had a penalty) had Tee Dubs up 2-0 with less than twenty played. So much for that then.
Or… drum roll/suspenseful music… was it!? Xavier Pratt and Armin Pasagic each scored in the second half and we were all level, mate. 2-2 with the clock ticking down. A draw would give Canterbury that crucial second place on the ladder (which’d mean a trip to the Champs League if they or Auckland City go on to win the title), plus it’d be a heroic way for the Tron Wands to finish a mostly humiliating season. Just one win all campaign… and that was the way it stayed as Andy Bevin scored a late winner for Team Welly. Oh well, so it goes. Hamilton Wanderers also go the whole season without ever keeping a clean sheet. That’s a sneaky seven goals for Bevin this season too.
So we’re left with three more games in the 2017-18 Premiership, with Auckland City hosting Eastern Suburbs and Team Wellington hosting Canterbury United in the two semis coming up next weekend, the former on Saturday and the latter on Sunday. Sounds like both games will be televised which is a massive relief given that natural logic suggests that of course they’d be televised and therefore that means we’ve every reason to fear that they wouldn’t because natural logic hasn’t always been the defining force of these… nah let’s not go into that. A couple ripping semis coming up, so pumped. A proper preview will be coming later in the week too for you thirsty beggars.
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