Australian A-League: Mariners go second
Central Coast Mariners moved in the second place on the A-League after beating Newcastle Jets 2-0 in a derby at the Energy http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Australia-c746 Stadium.
Matt Simon’s poaching goal gave Mariners the lead in the 14th minute in front of a crowd of 13,467 in Newcastle. Substitute, http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/John-Hutchinson-c18864 guaranteed 3 points for the home team with the second goal just moments before full-time.
The win now takes Central Coast Mariners to 43 points on the table. Hovering on the 3rd place, Adelaide United have the same number of points, but a superior goal-difference puts Mariners on 2nd place. The Central Coast side also has
a game advantage over their South Australian rivals.
Graham Arnold, coach of the Mariners was ecstatic with the derby victory. It was the Mariners’ third game in a week and the coach was happy that his team never showed any signs of fatigue throughout the game.
"It was a bit sloppy at times, but overall I have to be happy with a 2-0 win here in Newcastle", said Arnold.
Despite suffering a loss at home, the Jets are still in 6th place, but now have to regroup as a very undermanned Jets squad travels to Queensland to take on Gold Coast United this Saturday.
Newcastle Jets went into the game with key players on the injury list, and suffered a set-back when their captain, http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Kasey-Wehrman-c20420, hobbled off the field with an ankle injury following a clash with Perez. Wehrman was replaced by youth league player, James
Virgili, and was given the difficult task of heading the attacking midfield.
The Jets seemed to be struggling a lot at the start, and the Mariners took advantage of the situation by controlling the midfield. Their resilience paid well as, in the 14th minute of the game, the away team took the lead; http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Oliver-Bozanic-c28481 played
a long ball towards the Jets defense and, initially, Nikolai Stanley easily dealt with it, but his back-pass towards the goalkeeper wasn't powerful enough, and Simon latched on to the mistake before slotting the ball in the net from only 15 yards.
After a shaky start to the game, Newcastle Jets slowly adapted to the rhythm of the game and, midway through the first half, created their first scoring opportunity. http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Ryan-Griffiths-c31987, but he could not direct the ball
away from goalkeeper, Mathew Ryan, and shot it straight at him.
Newcastle found a lot of space to work with down the right flank but the Mariners defense remained resolute to cancel out the advances from Virgili and Zadkovich.
Coming out after the break, the Jets tried desperately to find an equalizer, and Zadkovich drew a save from Ryan after some decent initial build-up play from http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Tarek-Elrich-c34674. The Mariners should have put the result beyond doubt when a well placed
through-pass was met by http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Adam-Kwasnik-c3539. Kwasnik, however, failed to hit the target.
http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Sasho-Petrovski-c32603, the veteran striker, came on for Newcastle as the home team worked desperately to level the score. The Central Coast Mariners defense was very well organized and made life tough for the Jets' attack.
Simon should have scored his second goal of the match in the 77th minute, when he was on a one-on-one with Jets keeper, Kennedy, but Kennedy expertly denied Simon and kept his side in the game.
But after an impressive midfield domination, Mariners scored the deciding goal just 3 minutes before the final whistle. Substitute, Hutchinson received an excellent pass from McClinchey, and slid in a right-footed shot to make the score 2-0.
After the match, Branko Culina, Jets' head coach, lamented on the loss of his captain, Wehrman, so early in the game, and said that the early goal by Simon turned out to be a big hurdle for his side to surmount.
"It was significant (to lose) our most inspirational player and one of our best players and the fact that we lost him early," Culina said.
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