Marconi down Mariners and move a step closer to semi-finals berth

Marconi Stallions semi-finals charge took another positive step in the right direction on Sunday afternoon following a decisive 4-1 win over Central Coast Mariners Academy at Marconi Stadium.
Sitting just outside the Top Five on the IGA National Premier League NSW Mens 1 ladder heading into this week’s Round 18 clash, the Stallions were a touch off the pace during the opening exchanges, with the Mariners Academy controlling possession and proceedings throughout much of the first-half, but a pair of goals in the final 5’ minutes before the break ensured that the home side snared all three points on offer.
For the second-straight week the Mariners Academy failed to capitalise on a plethora of chances created throughout the opening stanza with livewire striker Adriano Pellegrino given plenty of great service by his midfielders who outmuscled their more fancied opponents in the middle of the park, but it was fellow speedster Jed Prater out on the right who created the first realistic opportunity of the match in the 8’ minute.

Prater’s pace down the right side proved too much for the stretched defensive line of the Stallions, and when he fired off a brilliant shot from out wide the visitors looked certain to open their account if not for the brilliance of Marconi goalkeeper James Chronopoulos who dived full-length to negate the chance.
The Mariners Academy were presented with another opportunity just 5’ minutes later when in the 13’ minute a nice cross to Bradley McDonald out on the left needed a strong finish, but the shot was rushed and sailed high and wide of its intended mark.
The visitors’ frenzied start had alarm bells well and truly ringing for the home side, and it took until the 20’ minute for the Stallions to eventually awake from their mid-afternoon slumber through a low cross, struck with sustained power, by Sean O’Connell from an acute angle out right that caught a deflection off defender Jamie Lobb. The deflection initially wrong-footed Mariners Academy keeper David Bradasevic who did well to get an outstretched glove to the ball only to see it rebound to an awaiting Elsid Barkhousir who fired off a shot, but was again saved by the cat-like reflexes of Bradasevic.
Pellegrino was again at his dazzling best creating a number of chances throughout the middle sector of the first-half, linking brilliantly with Chris Payne and Bradley McDonald, and it was the latter who, in the 31’ minute, should have had the Mariners Academy one-up.
Pellegrino once again outpaced the Stallions defence down the right side and delivered a perfectly weighted cross to find the head of an unmarked McDonald who even had time to readjust his line. McDonald’s intentionally angled header had the Marconi goalkeeper beat, only to be cruelly denied by the cold hard steel of the crossbar.
Instead of losing faith with the abundance of squandered opportunities, the Mariners Academy were resilient as they turned defence into attack, and none more so than in the 35’ minute where quick thinking left side defender Louis Bozanic passed beautifully from inside his own area to a vacant Pellegrino in the middle of the park.
Pellegrino found a charging Jed Prater who delivered a nice ball to Payne on his right to set him up with a one-on-one with the Marconi shot-stopper. Realising the desperation, Chronopoulos reduced the shooting angle, and despite Payne’s powerful shot, pulled off perhaps the save of the round to deny arguably what could have been the goal of the round. 
Eventually the missed opportunities came back to haunt the visitors when in the final 5’ minutes of the first-half the Stallions skipped out to a two-goal lead courtesy of a brilliant right foot thunderbolt from Milorad Simonovic, whose 41’ minute shot was precision-perfect to beat the keeper and slam into the back right corner of the net.
The Mariners Academy, with perhaps one eye on the clock as it counted down to the break, barely had enough time to regroup when the home side marched down the field in an attacking raid where a sublime cross by Tadhg Purcell was perfectly presented to an unmarked Barkhousir who rammed the ball home to provide his side with an unlikely two-goal advantage as the teams headed to the break.
The referee had barely blown the whistle to resume the second period when an uncharacteristic Mariners Academy mistake on the edge of their own penalty­-area allowed a quick thinking Purcell to scoop the ball up and slide it past the opposing goalkeeper to extend his side’s lead by a third goal with just 26’’ seconds erased on the clock in the final half.
Reeling from allowing three goals to be scored in the space of just 5’ minutes, the Mariners Academy could have been down a fourth in the 51’ minute when Marconi’s Sean O’Connell delivered a nice cross from out on the right, only to see the ball tangle between the legs of man-of-the-moment Purcell who did well to flick-kick a shot on goal straight to the goalkeeper.
The visitors did well to regroup and created a number of opportunities through their energetic forwards, and when a long through ball in the 54’ minute found star striker Pellegrino in behind the defensive line it looked certain that the Mariners Academy would finally put one away.
However, Marconi enforcer Umut Tokdogan showed some blistering speed of his own to run down Pellegrino to execute the tackle of the match inside his own area from behind to ensure that his side maintained a clean sheet.
The perseverance for Pellegrino and his side eventually paid off in the 61’ minute after some individual brilliance by the diminutive – but tall in stature – forward in the opposition’s penalty box when he slammed the ball home to give his side a sniff of hope.
A Mariners Academy 76’ minute free-kick just inside the opposition’s territory came close to shortening the deficit even further after the ball was delivered dangerously into the Stallions’ penalty-area. An ensuing scramble saw the ball drift out to the right where Pellegrino’s shot from a tight angle narrowly missed and further denied his side the much-needed momentum of heading into the final 15’ minutes of the match with some hope.
As time ticked away so did the visitors’ opportunities, and when an injury time own-goal in the 90’+3’ minute following a deflection off a Mariners Academy defender after some brilliant desperation again by Purcell to keep the ball in play and cross powerfully from the left, the boys from the Central Coast were left to rue the abundance of missed opportunities wasted throughout the opening half.
“I thought our team performance overall was quite pleasing, but it’s our individual mistakes that have continued to kill us all year,” admitted stand-in coach Peter Preston who was subbing for regular Mariners Academy head coach Mark Jones in his absence.
“We certainly created quite a few chances and we probably should have taken one or two of them in that opening half, and then to be punished right on half-time, not once, but twice after some sloppy defensive lapses really changed things.  
“Going into the sheds expecting to be locked up at nil-all and then ending up being two goals down changes the whole aspect of the team talk as the heads tend to go down, and then to concede in the opening seconds of the second-half didn’t help us.
“Playing against a great side like Marconi they just shut up shop and don’t let anything through after that.
“Our coach Mark [Jones] has been repetitive all year in saying that we have to rid ourselves of the individual mistakes – we just need to do better there as we’re really starting to run out of time.”
Marconi coach Jean Paul De Marigny was happy with his side’s performance and was in fact pleased with how his team started the game:
“I thought that we started quite well, but became a bit ill-disciplined in our shape and allowed the Mariners to get in behind us,” claimed De Marigny.
“I think that they had a couple of good chances and to be fair, I think that they [Mariners Academy] could have put one away but Jimmy (goalkeeper James Chronopoulos) made a great save.
“Our passing game was decent I thought at times, and we were a little stretched in the first-half, but we addressed that in the second-half and were a little more compact and narrow on the pitch and our passing game was good.
“We got that early goal in the second-half and that’s certainly one way to kill the opposition off and I think that we had the game in our control after that.”
When questioned as to the daunting run home for his side, De Marigny was philosophical in his approach.
“We don’t look too much at the opposition coming up as we are focused on making the Top Five,” De Marigny stated.
“You eventually have to beat all of those sides in the final five, so we’re just looking forward to the challenge that lies ahead.”
In perhaps the toughest run home of any of the top sides vying for a semi-finals berth, Marconi face up against the competition front-runners next week as they travel to the heart of the Shire to take on Robbie Stanton’s Sutherland Sharks next Saturday evening.
De Marigny’s men will be further tested in the following three rounds as they close out the regular season with scheduled clashes against Blacktown City FC (Rd 20), Sydney United 58 FC (Rd 21) and Bonnyrigg White Eagles (Rd 22).
Mariners Academy will be facing a battle of their own throughout the final four rounds of the season proper as they look to avoid the dreaded ‘wooden spoon’. Currently sitting in last place, albeit with just a single competition point separating them from the 10th and 11th placed APIA-Leichardt Tigers and South Coast Wolves respectively heading into Round 18, the boys from the Central Coast host Blacktown Spartans next Sunday afternoon at Pluim Park as they look to avenge the corresponding 4-0 drubbing they were on the receiving end of back in Round 8 at Blacktown Football Park.       
Match Stats
Marconi Stallions 4 (Milorad Simonovic 41’, Elsid Barkhousir 45’, Tadhg Purcell 46’, Own Goal 90’+3’)

Central Coast Mariners Academy 1 (Adriano Pellegrino 61’)
Sunday July 21st, 2013
Marconi Stadium, Bossley Park
Referee: Kurt Ams

Assistant Referees: Karl Davies and Samuel Grasso
Fourth Official: James Tesoriero
Marconi Stallions: 22.James Chronopoulos; 2.Mitchell Thompson, 3.Ali Haydar, 4.Umut Tokdogan, 6.Shane Webb (25.Kojiro Hori 87’), 7.Sean O’Connell, 8.Jared Lum, 10.Milorad Simonovic, 17.Tadhg Purcell, 26.Nahuel Arrarte, 45.Elsid Barkhousir (19.Damien Travis 58’)
Substitutes Not Used: 16.Mark Cindric, 21.Stefan Giglio, 23.Christopher Nunes
Yellow Cards: Mitchell Thompson 75’
Red Cards: Nil
Central Coast Mariners Academy: 20.David Bradasevic; 2.Matthew Crowell, 3.Jamie Lobb, 4.Kieron Stallard, 5.Brady Smith, 6.Christopher Payne, 7.Adriano Pellegrino, 11.Louis Bozanic (22.Liam O’Dell 83’), 16.Jed Prater (10.Tomislav Cirjak 80’), 23.Bradley McDonald, 24.Nathan Verity (8.Daniel Bragg 53’)
Substitutes Not Used: 1.Jordan Nikolovski, 32.Steve Whyte
Yellow Cards: Kieron Stallard 29’, Adriano Pellegrino 90’
Red Cards: Nil
-By Gary McDonald