Nothing Like An Absolutely Bonkers Away Win To Get A Wellington Phoenix Season Rolling
Have you ever seen anything like it? The Wellington Phoenix were 1-0 up away from home against Sydney FC when they were reduced to ten men by a sudden red card with about twenty to play. Then came another red card in the 86th minute condemning them to finish with nine. Pressure ensued, the Nix sat as deep as they could. Eight minutes of stoppage time were allotted to the exasperation of the Phoenix sideline. Suddenly a penalty got given against them and the desperate backs-to-the-wall scramble appeared to have come up short in the face of all that adversity.
Until Oli Sail saved that Adam Le Fondre penalty attempt. Jubilation, catharsis... then a handball was spotted from the rebound and a second penalty was awarded. ALF stepped up again as Oli Sail broke into laughter at the cruelty of the situation. Soon he was laughing even louder as Le Fondre fizzed it off target and somehow, some way, the Wellington Phoenix held on to win.
‘Peak A-League’ is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot... rarely has it ever been more valid than with that bonkers ending emanating from some heroic defending, some questionable officiating, a little helping of shambolic footy, and a pervading sense of baffling unpredictability. It’s not uncommon for fans to feel like their team is being picked on by the refs. Usually that’s just garden variety paranoia, particularly when we’re talking about a kiwi team in an Aussie competition... but bloody hell four major decisions going against the Wellington Phoenix in the final twenty minutes while protecting a 1-0 lead away from home? All with an element of controversy about them.
This was extraordinary. There must have been a lot of broken mirrors in the Nix changing room. Usually one major decision is enough to spark the fans into a frenzy (if the Nix had lost/drawn with only the Kraev red card having happened, that still would have been a big drama). To suffer four of them was just unhinged. Accursed areas. Then for the Nix to hang on and win despite it all? Mate, you’ve never seen anything like it in your life. What a thing to witness.
There’s a bigger story at play here. It’s not only about this one game, there was so much else going on around it. The Wellington Phoenix have potentially the best squad they’ve ever had and in the final year of Ufuk Talay’s (current) contract, returning home after the pandemic, from the very start this felt like a season where everything was aligned for something special. But that’s not quite what’s unfolded so far as silly errors and gentle lapses have kept them from capitalising on some otherwise useful performances. Set piece defending, late goals allowed, big chances missed. Things like that. More on that in this previous article.
Leading into this Sydney FC fixture, the Nix were yet to win a game away from home and only had two wins overall. This despite the fact that only Melbourne City have scored the opening goal in games more regularly. When Oskar Zawada got onto a clever angled ball into the area from Clayton Lewis, beating keeper Andrew Redmayne to the bouncing fella then showing enough composure to straighten up and score past the retreating defenders on the goal-line to give his team a tenth minute lead... that was the eighth time in eleven fixtures that the Wellington Phoenix have scored first. But only two of the previous seven had led to wins.
We’re talking about 12 points dropped from winning positions already. There was a 93rd minute equaliser conceded in week one at home to Adelaide (a game in which they also played undermanned after Yan Sasse was sent off on debut after 25 mins). They scored first the next week against Central Coast then ended up needing an 88th minute own goal in their favour to salvage a 2-2 draw. Just before the World Cup break they blew a 2-0 lead at home against Western United to lose 3-2, a bitter taste that was doomed to linger long in the mouth. A month later they finally had another game and Bozhidar Kraev struck first on the hour against Western Sydney... only for that game to end 1-1. And then last week David Ball’s 16th minute opener against Melbourne City was almost immediately cancelled out with the Nix going on to lose 3-1 despite battering the league leaders late on in search of a leveller (eventually conceding the clincher deep in stoppage time). Even the two times they’d scored first and won, they still allowed 1-1 equalisers both times before rallying again up to win 4-1 vs Macarthur and 3-1 vs Adelaide.
The good news is that other than Melbourne City, who are by far the best team in the land, the A-League is wide open this season and all it’ll take is one solid month of form to go surging up the ladder. The Phoenix are still waiting for that killer month... but Central Coast Mariners are a great example. CCM have bagged four wins form their last five and all of a sudden they’re up to second place. Hypothetically speaking, if the Nix had won held on to just half of those dozen points dropped from winning positions then they’d be in second place instead right now.
So, yeah, there was more at stake than one win from one sneaky away game. The Phoenix had blown the luxury of being able to take things as they come by wasting opportunities which, more than a third of the way into the season, were becoming increasingly hard to make up for. They need that run of form to build up their confidence, to put some points on the table, to live up to their own high expectations. And with twenty to play away to Sydney FC they were leading 1-0.
Should also add that Sydney FC is the club that the Nix signed coach Ufuk Talay from. He had previously been an assistant there and brought a lot of their tactical handbook with him to Wellington... and perhaps as a consequence of that SFC were the only club that he’d never beaten in the A-League. Two draws and five defeats. One more element at play here.
Another element was a very confusing trend regarding finishing. Because if there were some dramas beyond their control (for the most part) later on, they only had themselves to blame for the match still being in the balance at that stage. Following Zawada’s early goal, the Nix really should have hit the sheds up two or three. David Ball hit a great opportunity straight at the keeper while Kraev failed to beat Redmayne in a 1v1. Two massive moments gone begging amongst several other decent looks. Reminds you of the loss to Melbourne City a week earlier when they forged a heap of great attempts down the stretch but couldn’t put any of the buggers into the net for an equaliser.
The reason this is confusing is that the Wellington Phoenix, overall, have converted their chances at a very impressive rate this season. 19 goals scored from 16.0 xG certainly seems to back that up. 40.3% of their shots have been on target, third best in the comp. Plus they’ve scored a goal for every eight total shots, which is second best in the comp. Admittedly they’re only middling in terms of their overall shot quantity which is lowkey more important than accuracy rates and such things... but those numbers do suggest a team that’s pretty clinical in front of goal.
Now consider that they also lead the A-League in Big Chances Missed, with twenty of the suckers (via FotMob). Chief among them are the two penalties that they’ve missed this season: Kosta Barbarouses in the 3-2 loss to Western United (while the score was 1-0), and Kraev in the 3-1 win over Adelaide (score at 3-1). Those are the only two spot kicks they’ve taken this season. By the way, Sydney FC are second on the Big Chances Missed list with 18... which definitely came in handy at Allianz Stadium on Saturday night.
So the Nix are blowing more big chances than anyone else whilst still outperforming their xG? In other words they’re scoring the hard ones and missing too many of the easy ones. A more ruthless team puts at least another goal away while they were on top in the first half against SFC and then the drama at the end doesn’t have to be so near-catastrophic. Luckily finishing is a confidence game and we have seen both Bozhidar Kraev and Oskar Zawada in particular begin to score regularly. A sweet little winning streak could make all the difference.
Hence why they really, really, really could not afford to go throwing away another winnable game in the latter stages. They may have not necessarily been expected to win against Sydney FC away from home (although Sydney’s form ain’t exactly been peachy) but having gotten into that position, having already survived an overturned Sydney FC equaliser thanks to a VAR offside call (close but decisively offside), having also not previously kept a clean sheet at all this season (yet another element at play)... seeing Bozhidar Kraev red carded in the 71st minute for a gentle foul near the sideline in the opposite half of the field, his second yellow, was not a welcome development.
Drama I: The Kraev Red Card
Kraev had already been booked in the 34th minute for dragging down Max Burgess by the shoulder, pretty easy decision for the referee there. That instance happened about two minutes after he failed to score that 1v1 chance so maybe he was a little in his own head at the time. But fair play to Kraev because while his silky skills in attack have impressed since he joined the club, in this game it was his defensive work that shone out. Kraev did a heap of tracking back, a big reason why Rhyan Grant wasn’t a major factor in this match. And he did a lot of that whilst playing on a booking.
When that’s the case there’s always a chance that you get caught out with a second yellow, perhaps a bit of trickery from an attacker leaving you with no chance. This wasn’t that though. Kraev stepped across as Adrian Segecic tried to shield the loose ball against the touchline. Gave him a bit of a bump in the back and caught him with his leg and then patted him on the back in apology knowing he’d conceded a foul.
Exactly what prompted the ref to dish out a card for that one... now that’s a mystery. It was a generic foul, not in a dangerous position, not with any malice or excessive force. And you can’t say it was for persistence either because this was only Kraev’s third foul of the match and he’d been booked for one of the others already.
Nah, this was arguably the worst of the four big calls because at least with the others you can at least see what the ref/VAR was thinking even if the decisions were still debatable. And it was this red card that changed the course of the game as the Nix went to their bench with defender Josh Laws on for striker Zawada – switching to a 5-3-1 formation (having already gone 4-5-1 give mins earlier to stack the midfield). If Kraev isn’t randomly marched then the rest of the yarns probably don’t happen. ‘Twas a turning point, as they say.
Drama II: The Pennington Red Card
Fifteen minutes later it happened again. The Nix had a few wobbles with eleven on the park but on the whole looked pretty comfortable and composed. With ten they’d gone more defensive and therefore invited more pressure upon their goal but still handled most of what came their way. Then suddenly they were down to nine and it really got tricky.
Max Burgess is a former Phoenix player but he won’t have too many mates after reacting to a foul from Nick Pennington by going completely mental. Burgess had been playing backwards just inside his own half, trying to hold off Pennington who to be honest took more than one hack at him. Okay, free kick awarded, fair enough. But as Pennington turned to retreat, Burgess followed him with a couple shoulder barges and no doubt some angry words. Burgess leant all the way in with his head – forehead to forehead force – and threw an arm around the back of Pennington to drag him in for not-so-good measure.
Pennington then does something rather dumb in pushing him away with a hand raised towards the neck/chin of Burgess. By then, Clayton Lewis comes surging in to drag Burgess away and everybody calms down again. The ref draws in the two players. Burgess gets a yellow for being a nutcase. Pennington gets a red for being subjected to a nutcase but raising his hand too high in retaliation.
Assessing this with subjective, emotionless logic... that might be the right call. You can’t be looking like you’re trying to strangle a bloke on a football field. But while most referees will agree with that, not too many players will. Burgess was the instigator and the aggressor. Pennington only reacted the way he did because he was being engulfed by a wild opponent - and if the hand was raised around the neck that’s because Burgess was trying to put him in a skull-to-skull compress.
Nico was trying to shove MB’s head away. Burgess was leading forward so his neck wasn’t exposed. It looks bad and to a ref who’s right there in the vicinity – hence why it was silly from Pennington to give the ref the option (you hate to say it... but the wisest play was probably to collapse in a heap holding his face and then it likely ends up being 10 vs 10 the rest of the way) - but it’s not like he was trying to choke him. Pretty sure Pennington was trying to reinstate his breathing room and his hands quickly dropped to Burgess’ chest once he got some space. Could have been two reds. Really, two yellows would have sufficed, punishing both players evenly and allowing the fizz to simmer away. Instead the Nix had to finish the game with nine which only added to the impending boilover in their technical area.
Drama III: The First Penalty
The eight minutes added on felt excessive but there had been several injuries plus two red cards and a bunch of substitutions so if you went through the replay with a stopwatch and worked it out then eight minutes probably wasn’t too far off the mark. Can’t really argue. Especially since we didn’t get anywhere near eight minutes of actual football during that stoppage time despite almost reaching 100 minutes on the clock. A time-wasting substitution from Talay replacing Lewis with Yan Sasse was a goodie. Lewis conveniently being crippled by a bout of cramp just as his number went up on the board which meant he could barely limp off at a snail’s pace. Looked okay once he got to the bench, thankfully. That substitution took an entire minute to unfiold.
The dark arts of time-wasting do get shady but after two dodgy red cards you can forgive a team for operating within the grey areas. Oli Sail had already been booked for taking his time on a goal kick, stopping to stretch out his quads with a few lunges. During the recent Blackcaps Test match in Pakistan, commentator Simon Doull claimed a multiple times that a pace bowler isn’t doing his job on a flat wicket if he hasn’t been warned at least once for running down the middle of the pitch (to scuff it up for the spinners). Well, 1-0 up away from home in desperate need of a win whilst down to nine players, if your goalie doesn’t get booked for time-wasting with a goal kick then that goalie isn’t doing their job. In fact, they ought to have told someone else to take the next one and let them get booked too (doubt you can get away with it more than twice but, you know, gotta push the envelope).
Accounting for those stoppages of the ref’s watch, we were probably halfway through injury time when Tim Payne volleyed away a chip into his penalty area, which was then lobbed back in towards the far post. Adam Le Fondre was lurking on the end of it as Payne backtracked to challenge for the header. Didn’t win it. ALF then nodded the thing into his back. Penalty awarded.
The only thing that justifies that decision, which was upheld by the VAR, was if the ball caught Payne’s dangling arm before ALF’s header. Because otherwise that little bastard quite clearly strikes Payne between the shoulder blades. Keep in mind we’re talking about a 96th minute penalty in a 1-0 game here. Pretty astonishing way to potentially have the win dragged from your grasp. There may have been better camera angles that the video assistant had access too but there was no clear evidence on the broadcast that the ball ever hit Payne’s hand (although, bro, please don’t leave ‘em dangling like that again). A couple of replays later it seemed as though the call was going to be overturned to the blessed relief of the Welly Nix contingent. Alas: nope.
So instead Oli Sail took matters into his own hands with some vigilante justice. The first penalty save of his A-League career, get some of that!
In fairness he did save a few spotties back in his National League days with the WeeNix... but at ALM level the only one of the eight he’d previously faced which didn’t go it – as it says in the tweet – was the balloon shot from Steven Ugarkovic for Western Sydney last year in Auckland. A game that also ended in a 1-0 win to the Wellington Phoenix (it was opposing coach Mark Rudan who was sent off that day, however). Jamie Maclaren has beaten Sail from the spot in two separate games this season. Sail was also beaten by Jason Cummings in the All Whites vs Soccerroos game in Auckland back in September. He really picked one hell of a time to pull that one out of the bag.
Drama IV: The Second Penalty
Of course, by the time Sail had been swarmed by his jubilant teammates (and yelled some angry words in the direction of the ref), he was lining up to face another one. Turns out the rebound cross from Kazuki O’Toole caught the upheld arm of Callan Elliot and a second penalty was awarded.
At first it seemed like maybe they were checking to see if Sail had left his line too early. Then the replay of the handball popped up and, yeah, that’s a penalty. His arm was in his silhouette, protecting his face, but it was also clearly extended between himself and the ball. Weird seeing David Ball appealing to the ref by mimicking the arm position as if that was somehow evidence of it not being a valid handball. Also weird to notice that O’Toole didn’t even appear to appeal for it – the only bloke who visibly made a song and dance for the second pen was Slovakian import Robert Mak.
Then again, maybe the reason that O’Toole didn’t say anything is that he knew he’d encroached into the area before being first to the rebound?
Not that the VAR bothers with such trivialities. Second penalty in a row for Sydney FC. Didn’t score the first but here was another chance... and Adam Le Fondre slammed it wide of the target. Hilarious activities. ALF had scored 13/17 penalties in his A-League career prior to this game (including one in a win over the Nix a couple years ago, with Stefan Marinovic between the sticks). Oh well, such is life.
Uffie’s Nix have won a lot of respect around the league over the last few seasons for their style of footy, for the players they’ve developed, and for their covid sacrifices. They came into this season with higher expectations than ever before... yet have flexed an unexpected brittleness at times, failing to command the two penalty areas despite some sexy footy across the rest of the pitch. Perhaps, in a funny way, they needed a game like this to chuck some hot coals upon the fire in their bellies. Put that chip back on their shoulder, the same chip that’s always been there when this club has gone deep in the past. This win could just be the push to get them rolling.
Get amongst our Patreon whanau if you rate our work and wanna support what we do
Other helpful tasks: whacking an ad, signing up to our Substack mailer, and telling your mates about us
Keep cool but care