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.
No sooner does one tour end than the planning for the next one begins. The Football Ferns played their last game at the Cup of Nations last Wednesday and they don’t play the first of two games against Norway until April 5 but just six days after the loss to Korea and three weeks out from the Norway games here we go with a new squad and… it’s a lot like the last squad.
Got him. Yes. Get in. After unsuccessful trials with Hull City and Rangers, Big Stef’s got his immediate future sorted with a deal at Bristol City that’ll take him through until the end of the season.
In a twist that we never knew we needed but now can’t live without, Southern United kicked off early on Sunday at home against Hawke’s Bay United. An 11am start and the more we get of that next season the better.
Yeah alright then. Okay. We see you. Three points, eight goals, two young kiwi debutants off the bench, Roy Krishna going tied-top of the top goal scorer’s charts, the Welly Nix up to fourth on the ladder, and for the second time this season a manager has lost his job after getting thrashed by the Wellington Phoenix. All in all a good night.
For seventy minutes that was a pretty excellent performance. The Ferns had a higher ranked opponent locked down at 0-0 and were arguably looking the more likely to score at that point.
Some funky old things coming out of the Welly Nix beat lately, tell you what. Injuries and suspensions and contract confusion and all sorts.
Whoever decided it was a good idea to play a game of football in these conditions probably shouldn’t be in charge of deciding about where games of football are played as the Colorado Rapids hosted the Portland Timbers in their opening game of the 2019 MLS season in the coldest temperature ever recorded for an MLS game.
HBU’s season has basically been held together, in as much as it’s held together at all, by the goals of Sam Mason-Smith. Utterly excellent all season, having now started all 16 games to date. And he’s scoring a goal a game, the legend, more on that later.
You know what the best part about that game was? CJ Bott’s goal, obviously… but a close second and much more important in the long run is that the Fernies played a team that they were capable of beating and they beat them, even without playing anywhere near peak fluency.
Anytime the Football Ferns play the Matildas is a big deal, just as any time New Zealand and Australia meet in the sporting arena is a big deal. But for Tom Sermanni’s team this game had an even bigger context as the first game of a monumental 2019 which will culminate in the mid-year with the World Cup in France.
The man, the myth. Christopher Grant Wood. They say that if you look closely enough on the Burnley club logo you can actually see his name tattooed into the palm of that random hand thing waving out from inside the shield. Because they knew, they always knew. And now the prophecies have come true.
With the top four teams in the Premiership all sorted, the question becomes what is there left to play for amongst the poor souls left out of that picture? Pride is the obvious answer, although that doesn’t always take you too far.
Part One should have been the end of this article but then Mark Rudan went and said some things. He sat in front of a bunch of microphones and he iterated rather bluntly that he’d made it very clear to the Phoenix how he felt about giving up their home field advantage for a game like this.
The first time the Nix played Sydney FC it was a turning point in their season. They’d won their opening game but then went four straight without even scoring a goal until putting three past SFC in a blistering 45 minutes of brilliant football.
Steven Taylor is sticking around for another year. Could be the quality of the Wellington coffee, could be the thriving arts and culture scene, could even be the length of the pins around town. The footy hasn’t been half bad either to be fair.
Another win and Bordeaux are still frontrunners for third place in France with six more games remaining. 2-0 over FC Metz and that’s one more clean sheet for Footy Ferns keeper Erin Nayler ahead of the tour to Australia, bring it on.