Roy Krishna did something rather impressive last night. Or maybe a better way to put that is that Roy Krishna did something rather impressive for the entirety of the A-League season and last night was rewarded for it.
Guess who was at it again? Seventeenth minute of the game, Istanbul Basaksehir vs Ankaragücü, and Tyler Boyd cuts inside with a few stepovers, a few shimmies of the shoulder, and then smack right into the bottom corner. That’s his fifth goal to go with his four assists this season and he only joined the club in January. What a lovely goal it was too.
This season changed suddenly when word broke that Mark Rudan’s long expected departure was the real deal. The Nix had just lost a mud one 3-1 away to Adelaide and were about to lose an even more mud one 2-1 away to Brisbane Roar.
Wembley Stadium. The FA Cup Final. It’s all a bit of a dream for a young footy player growing up in Aotearoa, male or female, but Ria Percival made it history as she became the first New Zealander to play on that fabled stage in that fabled cup.
Talay hadn’t been the only person publically linked to the job and given the Nix’s track record you’d be forgiven for thinking it might be a while before next season’s priorities got dealt with. But lo and behold, just after 9am on Saturday morning the Welly Nix threw it all out there: Ufuk Talay was confirmed as the head coach for the 2019-20 season.
The Wellington Phoenix started brilliantly against the Melbourne Victory in their elimination playoff. Right from the start they looked sharp and energised, as Roy Krishna found and pocket of space and lashed one goalwards off his left foot for Lawrence Thomas to save.
There’s definitely a defensive feel to this squad, with a fair few fringe forwards left out of the picture. More than that it’s an extremely experienced squad. The only players with fewer than ten caps are two reserve keepers and a couple defensive alternatives. 14 of the 23 players have at least 50 caps and there are six centurions with a 99-capper in there too.
Here we are then. Friday night at 9.50pm at AAMI Park in Melbourne. It’s the Melbourne Victory against the Wellington Phoenix with the winner advancing to play either Perth or Sydney in the semi-finals and the losers can finally get back to work on that long-ignored novel they’ve been writing because their season will be over as swiftly as a Valyrian steel dagger to the gut.
Woah matey, who saw that one coming? For eight consecutive years and eleven times out of the last twelve the OFC Champions League has been won by a club from Aotearoa, the one exception being Hekari United’s triumph in 2010 and even that was still against Waitakere United in the final.
Bill Tuiloma has constantly planted one foot in front of the other and made strides ever since joining the Timbers. First it was establishing himself with the reserves at USL level. Then it was working in as a defensive option on the bench for the MLS team. Then it was a couple of impressive starting efforts in the playoffs last season when injury/suspension struck the squad.
But let’s be honest, if Mark Rudan was prioritising this game in any way then he wouldn’t have made six changes to a winning team. That alone was a dead giveaway for his priorities here. Meanwhile Perth have a bye next week because of being minor prems and all that plus they rested their dudes last week so they didn’t wanna go three weeks without a decent hit out.
A minor tweak for the usual number tahi Timon Wellenreuther and Michael Woud, fresh from being named in the Junior All Whites for the U20 World Cup in a few weeks, was up for his second Eredivisie start.
The Nix have been a confidence team this season with their fate constantly swinging with the hype of their results. That hype’s on the downswing at the moment. They needed one more of those ahead of that playoff game to get the buzz going again and they needed it desperately.
Bad news is a well-liked and successful manager leaving your football club. Worse news is when that manager is almost certainly leaving to join a rival club in the same competition. Worst news is when three-quarters of your current squad are still unsigned and might all decide to pop across and join the old gaffer at his new club.
Des Buckingham has named his 21-man squad for the upcoming U20 World Cup in Poland in five weeks and, mate, it’s a doozy. There are senior internationals, there are overseas professionals, there are Ole Academy stars, there are Wellington Phoenix grads.
Speak it into existence. Chris Wood knows the trick. Saying the words aloud is the first step towards success and the first hurdle to overcome in that process. The rest may as well be inevitable.
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.