2018 World Cup qualifying match review: Australia v. Jordan at Sydney (SFS)

Needing only a draw, if that, to book a spot in the next phase in their long and winding World Cup qualifying campaign, the Socceroos faced the oddly-shaped nation of Jordan at the scene of many great international matches, the Sydney Football Stadium.

Given Jordan’s 2-0 victory in the reverse fixture in Amman last October, a close match was to be expected; instead, the Socceroos routed their opponents, whose appointment of English supercoach Harry Redknapp has been in vain, having failed to secure one of the top four runners-up spots.

The hosts were slow to get going: the first major incidents of the match were an early Brad Smith’s tête-à-tête with Baha’ Abdel-Rahman and a Tom Rogić shot on target in the seventeenth minute. Hamza Al-Dardour then snuck onside from a free kick but lacked passing options and was closed down by the Socceroo defence.

In the twenty-fourth minute, the procession of goals began. The first combined assists from Aaron Mooy and Robbie Kruse with a Tim Cahill six-yard-box tap-in. The second came from a counter-attack, Mooy finishing with a sublime strike, unmarked and well outside the box. For the third, Kruse deftly chipped an aerial ball onto the head of Cahill, acting as stand-in captain in the absence of Mile Jedinak.

Cahill’s first shot of the second stanza was blocked, but Tom Rogić goaled with the rebound. Mooy and Mathew Leckie were rested in favour of Massimo Luongo and Chris Ikonomidis after the hour mark; five minutes after their introduction, Ikonomidis got on the end of a Smith throw-in and laid up the assist through a napping Jordanian defence for Luongo to score Australia’s fifth.

The sourest note of the match was the sixty-fifth-minute caution of Yousef Al-Rawashdeh: the Jordanian forward appeared to deliberately ‘cork’ Kruse, whose injury troubles have deprived Socceroo followers of an interrupted experience of his glorious crosses and breathtaking runs down the wing. Not taking any risks, Ange Postecoglou replaced him soon after with Nathan Burns.

Los australianos hammered the Jordanian goal in the final ten minutes but goalkeeper-captain Amer Shafi’s cat-like reflexes repelled everything they threw at him. Al-Nashāmā botched a counter-attack two minutes from time, but soon found a consolation goal when Abdallah Deeb threaded through a fatigued ‘Roos defence.

Australia 5 (Tim Cahill 24’, 44’; Aaron Mooy 39’; Tom Rogić 53’; Massimo Luongo 69’) – Jordan 1 (Abdallah Deeb 90’)

Cautions: Yousef Al-Rawashdeh (Jor.) 65’; Baha’ Faisal (Jor.) 77’; Bailey Wright (Aust.) 80’; Tom Rogić (Aust.) 89’

AFL Round 1 match review: Geelong v. Hawthorn at Melbourne

Melbourne, March 28

Footy’s back. Well, it restarted on Thursday night but one had to wait until Easter Monday for The Greatest Team Of All™ to begin their campaign.

Both sides signalled their intent with a relentless defensive effort: neither scored until the eighth minute of regulation time, when Luke Breust snapped a major from inside fifty. But it was all Geelong for the rest of the term; Zac Smith, Lincoln McCarthy, Smith again, and Josh Caddy all goaling to put the hoops fifteen points up at the first change.

The biancoazzurri onslaught continued at the resumption: Steven Motlop and McCarthy piled on two more early, and the Cats outgoaled their opponents 7-4, finishing the quarter with a spectacular Tom Hawkins soccer in the goal square. By the main break, Geelong led 11.1.67 to 5.7.37, had won eighty-three contested possessions to the Mayblooms’ sixty-six, and star recruit Paddy DANGERFIELD! had racked up twenty disposals and effectuated five inside fifties.

But there have been strange rumblings in football this weekend, the new cap of ninety mid-quarter interchanges per team per match seemingly causing wild turnarounds in fortunes. And so it was in the third quarter: Puopolo, Gunston, Burgoyne goal but Andrew Mackie can only hit the post; a turnover and Billy Hartung receives the ball from a teammate’s volleyball spike; Puopolo runs onto another loose ball inside the arc and majors; Hawkins misses the lot and Selwood’s nine-iron snap sails through for a behind. A five-goals-to-none third quarter, and the Mustard Pots head into lemon time two points up.

It all came back now: the 2008 Grand Final, the 2013 preliminary final, Easter Monday 2015. That fatalism, that sense of being outgunned by a brown-and-gold máquina that wins premierships and Chooses Swisse. That awful feeling that Hawthorn were about to unleash The Real Julia on us.

Darcy Lang and Jack Gunston traded goals. Dangerfield remonstrated with an umpire after being denied a free kick. Dennis Cometti, demonstrating a superb knowledge of the sport’s history, referred to that line at the top of the goal square as the “kick-off line”. Joel Selwood marked outside fifty and handballed off to Cam Guthrie, whose long-range effort put Geelong two points up.

The new fashion in the ninety-interchange-capped era of footy is to rest midfielders in the forward line, a homage to the Good Old Days when your ruckman spelled in the back pocket and your ruck-rover and your rover occupied the forward pockets. And so it was for the boy from Moggs Creek: mid-way through the final term, he outmuscled the Hawthorn defence, kicked a behind, took a screamer on the shoulders of Ben Stratton near what Cometti again called the “kick-off line”, and booted another behind.

Four points ahead, the Pivotonians’ lead hit double digits with Lachie Henderson’s first major in the hoops, but this state of affairs lasted only as long as Breust’s lovely floating set shot. DANGERFIELD! added to his tally of behinds with a poster before Caddy extended Geelong’s lead.

Luke ‘Bloody Idiot’ Hodge, heretofore having a quiet afternoon, copped Mitch Duncan’s elbow in his face on centre wing, but the subsequent report was the only black spot for the Cats, who stacked on another three goals in the last five minutes to win what Cometti described as “a real tug-of-war at the M.C.G. this afternoon”. Tug-of-war, I recently discovered, was a medal event at the five Summer Olympics between 1900 and 1920, and this was an Olympian effort.

And the most Olympian of them all was DANGERFIELD! The Crows recruit tallied forty-three possessions, breaking the first-match-for-a-new-club record held by Greg Williams (thirty-seven for Sydney after transferring from Geelong in his Brownlow-winning year of 1986). Thanks to his duet with Selwood, Geelong won the centre clearances 51-39 and the inside fifty count 61-46. And ninety interchanges? Who needs them? We only needed eighty-four.

Sydney, March 29

Was this real? Did I dream this? I’d certainly dreamed about something like this all summer:

Dangerfield leads Geelong to 30-point win over Hawthorn

The ABC News24 newsbar said it, so it must be true.

Geelong 18.8.116 – Hawthorn 12.14.86

Goals: Caddy 3, Lang 3, Smith 3, Hawkins 2, McCarthy 2, Blicavs, Guthrie, Henderson, Motlop, Murdoch (Geel.); Gunston 3, Puopolo 3, Breust 2, Langford 2, Burgoyne, Hartung (Haw.)

Best: Dangerfield, Blicavs, Guthrie (Geel.); Mitchell, Frawley, Puopolo (Haw.)

2018 World Cup qualifying match review: Australia v. Tajikistan at Adelaide

The Socceroos, presumably in homage to Coldplay, unveiled their All Yellow strip (with green socks) as they resumed their World Cup qualifying campaign against Tajikistan on a cut-up Adelaide Oval surface seemingly covered in big strips of green masking tape. Piling up a cricket score against the hapless and wounded Central Asians, they ploughed on ahead of Jordan at the top of Group B.

The sizeable crowd were barely in their seats when Massimo Luongo opened the scoring in the second minute, taking his chance from outside a chockers penalty area. Ten minutes later, captain Mile Jedinak converted a penalty occasioned by keeper Alisher Tuychiev professionally fouling international debutante Apostolos Giannou.

The Socceroos kept firing balls into the penalty area – twenty-three by the fortieth minute to Tajikistan’s one – without adding to the 2-0 scoreline, and the visitors had two players stretchered off. Looking très haut-couture in their white shirt with thin green-then-red-then-green-then-red-again chevrons, they were looking competent enough at the back until they came undone after the interval.

Defender Davron Ergashev was cautioned for collaring Giannou in the box, substitute captain Mark Milligan putting i gialloverdi 3-0 up. Nathan Burns had a few chances before tapping in an Aaron Mooy cross in the sixty-seventh minute, and the subsequent introduction of Tom Rogić, on for Luongo, fired up the Socceroos’ offence. Within five minutes, the Celtic man had netted a brace: the first a Wembley-Tor from a Mooy free kick, the second an opportunist extra-areal strike.

Not done yet, Rogić hit the bar in the seventy-fifth minute, and his team would hit the woodwork twice more. Burns’ second goal completed the rout, a mere training drill on the road to Russia.

Australia 7 (Massimo Luongo 2’; Mile Jedinak [pen.] 13’; Mark Milligan [pen.] 57’; Nathan Burns 67’, 87’; Tom Rogić 70’, 72’) – Tajikistan 0

Cautions: Alisher Tuychiev (Taj.) 11’; Daler Tukhtasunov (Taj.) 27’; Davron Ergashev (Taj.) 56’; Trent Sainsbury (Aust.) 81’; Kamil Saidov (Taj.) 85’