Monday 4 July 2016

Stayin’ Alive - Sydney Olympic 3-0 Parramatta FC

We have just about kept ourselves in the race to make the Top 5 and participate in this year’s Finals Series. After a fantastic showing on Sunday Afternoon which saw Sydney Olympic topple a resurgent Parramatta FC, who they themselves were harbouring aspirations of making the Top 5.

The play in the First Half from both teams was indicative of the importance both had placed on this match. With time running out to make the Top 5 and play Finals Football for 2016, both sides started cautiously. Although our best chance of the First Half did come early on, when Will Angel once again beat his defender and delivered a ball inside the box to Josh Gaspari, who disappointingly sent his shot straight at the goalkeeper. A Parramatta mistake in their own half soon after gifted us another opportunity, but unfortunately we could not capitalise. Both sides created half chances and threatened to score for the rest of the half, but there was no cutting edge from either side. Defense was the order of the day from both sides throughout that First Half, as any chances were quickly snuffed out and the score would remain 0-0 at the half-time break.

During the first few moments of the Second Half it was quite noticeable that there was an increase in the intensity from the Sydney Olympic players, which was a good sign from the supporters’ point of view. Within the first 5 minutes of the Second Half we opened the scoring, courtesy of a fantastic strike from Harris Gaitatzis, who made room for himself to have a shot from the edge of the box, which nestled into the corner of the Parramatta net. The match then see-sawed, with Parramatta going close to scoring an equaliser. With 20 minutes or so to go though, we got the all-important second goal via Harris Gaitatzis again, a beautiful piece of individual skill to get passed the defender was finished off with a brilliant chip over the Parramatta goalkeeper, it was another great finish. After this, Parramatta predictably then came out in a search for goals to put themselves back into the contest, this of course left acres of room for the Sydney Olympic players to exploit and deep into injury time, we grabbed our 3rd of the afternoon thanks to that man again, Harris Gaitatzis, who tapped in from close range after a quick goal-kick from Paul Henderson found Jason Madonis in the clear, who summed up the situation perfectly to deliver the pass for Harris to finish the game off with an easy tap-in 
and complete his hat-trick.

So obviously a very important win which keeps our Finals hopes alive. We now have two weeks to gather our thoughts, to get over any injuries and also with no Cup distractions we can fully focus on the last 5 matches of the season and make a run at the Top 5.

The German Rene Klingenburg did not play as he was hacked to pieces last week and missed yesterday’s win over Parramatta. Rwandan International, Jean-Baptiste Mugiraneza, who we have also signed for the remainder of the season did not get clearance in time to play yesterday. Hagi Gligor, who last played at Perth Glory was also signed in midweek and made his debut for us on Sunday and performed well. With the 2 weeks off, we have time to get our house in order so to speak, all Sydney Olympic Supporters hope that we haven’t left our run too late.

Also, a big congratulations goes out to Will Angel, who notched up 150 matches for Sydney Olympic on Sunday. Becoming only the 2nd player to reach this figure in the post NSL era and the 2nd player to achieve the milestone this season, following on from Paul Henderson who did it earlier this season.

For the Club Championship, it was a better week compared to the last few weeks. In the U18s we lost 2-1, in the U20s we picked up a 1-1 draw, adding in our 3-0 win in First Grade and we picked up a valuable 14 points towards the Club Championship.

As was mentioned earlier, next weekend is a bye round as the Waratah Cup Final between Manly United and Sydney United takes precedence, so we are not in League action. We are next in action on Saturday Night, July 16, away to the Bonnyrigg White Eagles, kickoff is at 7pm at the Bonnyrigg Sports Club.

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