Adelaide 2-0 Sydney

Goals thanks to JayFCAK47

Last night AUFC finally made their way back into the winners' circle thanks to goals from Ognenovski and Dodd, but it was a bit of a strange match. Adelaide started off looking pretty out of sorts and disinterested - not helped by the fact that there was no recognized striker on the field, with Dodd leading the line and Diego sitting behind him. The crowd (a disappointing 9,500 ish) was similarly sluggish, with Hindmarsh cold as a flat white from the Bean Bar on Gawler Place (yes I have issues) due to a nasty wind coming straight off the arctic tundra of the western suburbs.

Sydney actually had the best of the play for the first part of the match, with a nice little piece of interplay passing between Corica and Aloisi being a standout in my memory. This all changed on the stroke of half time though - Adelaide won a free deep on the right hand side of the pitch, the much-maligned Sarkies stepped up and delivered a beautiful cross to Oggy's big ugly head, which directed the ball into the back of the net. Lovely.

After the break Adelaide came out firing on all cylinders. Sydney's game took another turn for the worse when McFlynn was sent off for (apparently) abusing the ref. No doubt it will be seen as another reffing 'controversy' - mostly because it was Sydney on the receiving end, but it looked fair enough to me. This is what I saw:

1. McFlynn goes down in a tackle.
2. He hobbles off the pitch to get some treatment. His knee is quite clearly fucked, he can't walk, there's no way he can continue playing (although he would probably still be fit enough to win a contract as Adelaide Utd's new marquee player).
3. Play continues.
4. Hold on a second, who's that dickhead lying on the pitch behind play in a Sydney shirt? Surely not McFlynn?
5. Ref walks up to him, has a few words, shows the red card. From a replay I saw later, it looks like McFlynn either calls the ref "fucking shit" or a "fucking cheat".
6. Kosmina develops a stomach ulcer.

What a fucking cynical thing to do, coming back onto the pitch and having a nice lie down when it's obvious that you're unable to play any more. Abusing the ref is never a sensible decision, either.

Anyway, after Sydney went down to ten men Adelaide stepped up another gear: Cassio came on for Sarkies, and we started dominating the left wing. Jamieson is a much, much better player when he has the Pocket Calculator to play off. Aussie Gyawe replaced Diego, who had a decent enough game but lacked the urgency that we needed to really punish the boys in baby blue. Cristiano came on for Alemao a little later, and immediately made a huge difference (an actual striker on the park! Imagine that!)

By this stage AUFC were pretty much toying with Sydney: the second goal came when the Spawning Salmon himself took advantage of Beau Busch's demonstration of 'how not to play in your defensive box' and poked the ball home - the contest was all over. All that was left to do was for Jamieson and Cassio to keep on destroying Shannon Cole's confidence for a little while, then for the ref to blow the final whistle and send the fans home windburned, hypothermic but happy.