Disappointment

When people say that winning isn’t everything, this is what they mean. Because if winning was the only thing that mattered then we wouldn’t do this, winning is such an elusive target and ultimately almost every sports season ends in disappointment for players and fans alike. It’s brutal. We humans have this tendency to adjust our expectations just far enough to ensure as much. Good form doesn’t fulfil those expectations, it expands them. Hence a Wellington Phoenix team that came into the campaign with three quarters of a new squad and a new coach and which was tipped for the wooden spoon by certain pundits can finish a season in their best ever league position and still it feels empty and wasted.

This was our chance. Ufuk Talay’s Welly Nix may have stumbled to the finish after lockdown but they still came into this Elimination Final against Perth Glory playing some of the best football we’ve ever seen from this club with a really talented and motivated squad and against a team that’s been shipping goals and losing games (including to the Phoenix) since the restart themselves but in the end the same old problems reared their hideous heads once more. Like the shadowy figure of the Hound of the Baskervilles, it’s intimidating gaze upon the goal, striking fear into strikers. An accursed image. The Phoenix won just one of six restart games because they couldn’t score the goals that their play deserved. Against Perth in the playoffs they had an incredible 31 shots, 11 of them on target. But they didn’t score. It’s not a coincidence, its a pattern. A doomed pattern.

But the fact that this felt like the chance is half the problem. We’re talking about a team that hasn’t won a playoff game since 2012 and which has only made the finals at all three times in the eight years since (which is two fewer than the number of permanent managers the club has had in that time). This loss would hit different if this were a team that was mid-dynasty and not a team whose spare finals appearances feel like one-offs and therefore unrepeatable opportunities. If this were a team mid-dynasty then we’d be able to take a more open-minded perspective of the fact that they’ve spent nine weeks away from friends and whanau living in Australia, that they’ve played seven consecutive games in a foreign country, that their top goalscorer was out injured, that a starting CB was out injured, that the whole league was reshuffled by a global pandemic, that this team was far less experienced than their opponents, that their starting XI (along with having seven players aged 25 or younger) had a combined five previous A-League Finals games.

Those aren’t excuses and the Phoenix clearly shoulda won this game. But that immediate disappointment takes on a different context when stopping to think just what the Nix were up against and what they’re still building towards. This one hurts. It hurts much more than last season when it felt a bit like we were just happy to be there (and were also well beaten), it hurts because this team was so much better than these last few weeks. But we can’t say the writing wasn’t on the wall with the finishing in front of goal and in the end that one critical weakness caught them short. So it goes.

The Game

When Jaushua Sotirio was named to start ahead of Callum McCowatt it was definitely a head-scratcher... but it made a certain amount of sense in a playoff context. Sotirio is great at getting into good positions, stretching the defence with his pace and movement yet he’s a terrible finisher. Meanwhile McCowatt’s come into some great form by attacking defenders and playing direct. Give Sotirio an hour or maybe even 70 minutes to do his thing then bring on McCowatt to run at tired defenders for the rest of it, extra time included if that’s how it was to be.

That didn’t happen though. Perth Glory took the lead in the 18th minute with a fine goal from Joel Chianese, you could say a few things about Te Atawhai Hudson-Wihongi being slightly out of position but that was a great run from Chianese and an even better finish. TAHW recovered to get a decent challenge in there and Stefan Marinovic took some beating from that angle. Like, fair play. It was a quality goal. So the Nix spent the next seventy minutes chasing the game and when McCowatt finally got introduced it was for a midfielder (Cam Devlin on a yellow). Sotirio ended up playing ninety minutes for only the third time all season... and absolutely shanked the best chance of the game for the Phoenix.

Guts to Sotirio, he’s become a bit of a pariah for that loss. Phoenix fans aren’t a toxic bunch so it won’t get over the top but yeah when you have nine shots in a playoff game and don’t even look like scoring it’s a rough one to dodge the spotlight. He wasn’t the only one though, far from it. David Ball worked so hard to get involved but he was drifting all over the park when we needed our main striker in the penalty area on the end of things. Ulises Davila was blessedly more keen to shoot and he went bloody close a couple times too, on a happier day one of those floats in the top corner and this article has a completely different tone. But he was also pretty well contained by the Glory. Reno Piscopo played well but didn’t find much space either. Callan Elliot and Libby Cacace were excellent and involved in most of the best chances the Nix made but without the final product around them there was no reward for that. The football was supreme at times, the effort and intensity was never lacking... but a turtle can’t fly no matter how hard it tries and the Wellington Phoenix with a team full of average to bad finishers didn’t score a goal and their season is over.

Not sure if Luke DeVere would have made a difference or not. The signing of DeVere was a solid one from day tahi, the only worry was whether he could stay fit. He did... right up until the biggest game of the season. He missed one game for suspension and one when he was rested and otherwise started every single game... until being ruled out for the Elimination Final with a groin sprain. Except Te Atawhai Hudson-Wihongi has emerged as a really decent backup CB and honestly Perth didn’t have a lot of chances beyond the goal, can’t really fault him. As mud as the restart was for the Phoenix, one major positive has been the performances of some of their reserve players which we’ll hopefully continue to see the benefits of next season and beyond. More on that later.

For real, football is a simple game. This was a simple example of a simple game. There’s only one reason that the Wellington Phoenix lost and it’s because they failed to improve their recent horror form in front of goal, end of story. These games are the big time and a moment of magic can be the difference if someone steps up to be the hero. That’s what happened for Western United with that Diamanti jerry.

The only regret is that I don’t think Uffie used his subs very well. You’ve gotta be assertive in knockout footy and as the second half kicked off, down a goal, I remember saying to nobody in particular that if the Nix don’t equalise within ten minutes then I’d be hooking Sotirio and putting McCowatt on (with Ben Waine also on the bench to bring on for a midfielder later on if things don’t progress). Don’t waste any time with it.

That didn’t happen. McCowatt finally came on for the last 16 minutes and had one amazing chance to be the hero with a volley late on... but he sliced it. There wasn’t a lot of attacking punch on the bench and there wasn’t hardly any experience (Alex Rufer arguably should’ve come on a lot earlier too given his ability to pick a pass into the attacking third) - losing Gary Hooper and Tim Payne had flow on effects well beyond their own selves being missing. But we let that one slide for way too long and then eventually ran out of time. It’s been a rare thing that Uffie’s been outplayed on the tactical side but against wily old Tony Popovic that’s exactly what happened. Ah well, Talay’s not the first to suffer that fate. Gotta remember he’s new to the Finals scene as a head coach too... interesting to see what happens with Sydney FC vs Perth midweek because Sydney have also looked poorer since lockdown and tactically there’s a whole lot of crossover between SFC and WP (thanks to the Talay link). I can’t think of a good reason why that style of play should have suffered from the restart but it is a notable coincidence.

Acceptance

It is what it is. ‘Twas a wonderful season that occasionally hinted at greatness and ultimately ended in disappointment but unlike last season we should at least be able to build upon these foundations and keep some continuity into next season. On that note, here are the two starting teams from the Elimination Finals defeats of the last two seasons...

2018-19, lost 3-1 to Melbourne Victory (Mark Rudan):

Filip Kurto | Ryan Lowry, Steven Taylor, Andrew Durante, Michal Kopczynski, Liberato Cacace | Mandi, Alex Rufer | Max Burgess, David Williams, Roy Krishna

2019-20, lost 1-0 to Perth Glory (Ufuk Talay):

Stefan Marinovic | Callan Elliot, Steven Taylor, Te Atawhai Hudson-Wihongi, Liberato Cacace | Matti Steinmann, Cam Devlin | Ulises Davila, Reno Piscopo | Jaushua Sotirio, David Ball

I’m just gonna throw this one out right here for free but if Roy Krishna were in this current Phoenix team then they’d have won that game. In fact on second thought they might not have because they might not have even needed to play it, they might well have locked in second place instead. In every other way this team has either improved or at least kept even. That realisation alone should be the driving philosophy of their recruitment for next season.

It’s been a conveniently overlooked factor just how difficult the stay in Australia was for the Welly Nix and we’ll never know how much it affected their performances. Nobody from the team’s ever gonna admit it, they would have had just as much belief if not more (siege mentality, baby). But let’s not forget that under regular service this would have been a game played in front of a sellout crowd in Wellywood and the Phoenix have hauled in some top notch results away from home over the course of this season but only at home were they consistently dominant. Here are the splits...

Welly Nix at Home: 11 GM | 8 W | 1 D | 2 L | 19 GF | 9 GA | +10 GD | 25 PTS

Welly Nix Away/Neutral: 16 GM | 4 W | 4 D | 8 L | 19 GF | 25 GA | -6 GD | 16 PTS

Just to hammer it home even more, the two home losses were in the first four games of the season. Since then they’ve gone nine games undefeated at home, including two games in Auckland, and whenever it is that they get to play another home game they’ll pick up where they left off on a six game home winning streak.

Quick note of fare thee well for Liberato Cacace. The youngest player in the Phoenix starting team and yet the most experience in the A-League for the club. Since his debut in February 2018 he’s played 58 games for the Nix, plus two more in the FFA Cup, and has established himself as the no-doubter Best Left Back in the A-League. I’ll do some more season reflections later in the week but Cacace is my Phoenix Player of the Season. He emerged on the scene with the wisdom of a fifteen-year defensive veteran and this season really took it to the next level as an attacking weapon too. It’s been an absolute pleasure to witness. It will be an absolute pleasure to witness whatever he does next as he graduates from Welly Nix write-ups to Flying Kiwis write-ups.

The Future

Again, there’ll be way more on all this in the coming days but this is how the contract statuses in the squad are looking at this current moment...

2022-23: Alex Rufer

2021-22: Steven Taylor (I), Tim Payne, Josh Sotirio, Reno Piscopo

2020-21: David Ball (I), Ulises Davila (I), Stefan Marinovic, Louis Fenton, Oli Sail, Brandon Wilson, Cameron Devlin, Liberato Cacace, Ben Waine

Off Contract: Matti Steinmann (I), Gary Hooper (I), Luke DeVere, Te Atawhai Hudson-Wihongi, Liam McGing, Callum McCowatt, Callan Elliot, Walter Scott

Here are the top five priorities for next season:

1. A goal-scoring number nine striker who can compete for a golden boot

2. Come to a decision over Matti Steinmann’s future – which means seeing whether he’s keen to return but also considering whether Alex Rufer starting in his place and using that import spot elsewhere might be better

3. Re-sign TAHW and Elliot immediately

4. Who plays left-back? There are a heap of right backs in the squad atm and Elliot has played LB at NZU20 level before though they’re all right footed - maybe we recruit, maybe we convert.

5. Callum McCowatt

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