Thompson Guns Down Fury

By: Marcus | August 27th, 2009

Saturday August 22, 2009

North Queensland Fury: 0
Melbourne Victory: 1 (Thompson 45′)
Dairy Farmers Stadium, Townsville

Again sorry for the late post, I’ve been flatout.

The match was a pretty tight game from all reports, with the Fury making the midfield congested and forcing long balls to create attacks. For what I saw it was exactly that, very tight, very congested, the only goal coming from a long ball over the defence.

Pre match there was some question marks hanging over our starting 11 with Kemp’s wife due to give birth (A week later the baby is still not out, I think he’s gonna miss Perth to. What the hell is the bloody thing doing?). The other question was would Adrian Leijer make his return for The Big V, after traveliing from England and only sleeping for 4 hours. Sure enough Leijer did play to the delight of all Melbourne fans, he was rock solid at the back and set up Archie’s goal. Sukha also made his first start for Melbourne filling in for Kemp in right back, he played well, picked up the only yellow of the match.

The match was quiet dull as you would imagine, the only highlights were Leijer’s long ball from the back which was beautifully controlled by Archie and coolly placed into the bottom corner. Archie had a couple of other opportunities that he should have taken, as he was one on one with the keeper. But on both occasions the keeper reacted early and made the saves (Disappointed with his last effort in the 80th minute, the keeper dived before he kicked it, he should have gone around him, big opportunity). The North Queensland players did not look very solid in defence as shown in Archie’s goal (shouldn’t have had the much room) and Karl Dodd going for the big boot out of defence while his team mate Robbie Middlby attempted to header the ball to safety… wasn’t pretty but Robbie is alright. I nearly shit my pants in injury time as this time Melbourne’s defence failed to deal with a long ball, putting Fury forward Dyron Daal (I think) one on one with Moss. You can imagine how terrified every Melbourne supporter was, Daal loaded up and took the shoot, the ball disappeared under Moss’s legs (thought it was a draw right there), but Moss managed to gather the ball and get his first clean sheet for Melbourne.