Brisbane Roar are finding Killer Bs like a Wu-Tang franchise
He’s no Besart Berisha, but Brisbane’s Brandon Borrello might just be the Killer B this bunch has been badly begging for. It was the attack of Berisha, Thomas Broich and Luke Brattan that powered the Roar to success last season. But without the Albanian, they looked toothless in the early stages of this season.
It’s a different story now. Brisbane have lost only once since early December, and have now won four of their last five games. And this past week and a bit, Borrello has started to show the competition what he is capable off. The 19-year-old set up their first goal last weekend. Mid-week in the Asian Champions League, he scored the solitary goal in Brisbane’s smash-and-grab in Tokyo. And on Sunday, his effort condemned the Western Sydney Wanderers to their latest one-goal defeat (their specialty this season). Like Brisbane come finals time, this Young Socceroo is one to keep an eye on.
The best thing Eddy Bosnar can do with a free-kick is not take it
Collectively, A-League fans have wasted an estimated 13 years, seven months, eight days and 547 minutes watching Bosnar take free-kicks (source: unknown). Bosnar did once – yes, once – score for Central Coast from a free-kick. It wasn’t pretty – a free-kick taken by the halfway line, and by the time the ball arrived at the goal, the keeper seemed to have dozed off. That happened little more than a month after he joined the Mariners. Ever since, A-League fans have laughed, then grimaced, through his supersized run-ups, which have at times appeared like a better attempt at the Stawell Gift than an attempt on goal.
But the Mariners’ interim coach, Tony Walmsley, seems to have unlocked the secret to Bosnar and the free-kick. That is: don’t let him near the ball. And so it was Fabio Ferreira shot the home side to victory in the first match of the post-Phil Moss era yesterday. An Eddie Bosnar free-kick? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
The linesman is only meant to give the benefit of the doubt to your team
The assistant referee, we are often told, should give the benefit of the doubt to the attacker in a tight offside decision. Except, it seems, when it means a goal for the other team. Melbourne’s AAMI Park almost exploded on Saturday night after the referee’s assistant allowed a goal from Andy Keogh, despite repeated replays showing the Perth striker had illegally breached Victory’s defensive line milliseconds too early.
Jonathan Wilson notes that changes to the offside rule in 2005 “clarified that a player is offside only if a part of his body with which he is legally able to play the ball is beyond the penultimate defender”. A leading arm, therefore, doesn’t make a striker offside, and although Keogh was almost a full body in the red, Wilson would argue that “that, realistically, is academic”, because “what the change did was to shift the benefit of any doubt yet further in favour of the forward”. Hence, unless you hate goals and want the game stopped for a video dissection of every contentious decision, lay off the refs.
Ernie Merrick can coach (a lesson for Victory fans only)
There might just come a day when the surliest of Melbourne Victory fans will have the accept the evidence that Merrick is actually not a terrible coach. And that day might come very shortly. His Wellington Phoenix side have finished the round in second place. They actually sat on top of the ladder for a few hours following a 2-0 win against Adelaide, and have the chance to claim it outright next weekend when they travel to Perth.
All that with a Nathan Burns instead of an Archie Thompson, a Roly Bonevacia for a Fred and an Andrew Durante for a Kevin Muscat. This is a worrying sign for those of us on the west island. If Wellington can get their act together, they could dominate the league for some time, because no matter what they achieve domestically, they’ll never be accepted into the Asian Champions League. And that competition can often be kryptonite for A-League teams.
Mark Janko even more dangerous than his doppleganger
If you take a look at Janko in the dark, and perhaps squint a bit, the league’s deadliest marksman, sharpest shooter and most potent weapon could be a dead ringer for one Lee Harvey Oswald. So what to make of his match-winning goal against the Jets, which required not one but two shots?
Along with Brisbane, Sydney FC are the form team of the competition since the Asian Cup break. It’s no coincidence that the Austrian captain has been at the top of his game of late, storming the top of the Golden Boot list.
He has nine goals in little more than a month. He’s scored so many braces in that time that a night like Friday, when he scored a solitary goal, seems like a quiet night. Significantly, nine of his 13 goals this season have been opening goals. No other player has more than five of those.
