SF33

Redmayne going for his third consecutive clean sheet against us. Surely we can't let that happen.

Ah, yes. Mercifully I missed that one, after I'd planned to catch the replay but stumbled on the final result before I had a chance.

Is Kamau's goal against Victory really the last time we scored from open play? Feels like that happened a year ago. I just don't get this team at all. Unlike last year, our corners have actually gone into dangerous areas, only for the ball to bounce with no-one near it then get cleared by a defender. We don't even look like getting a head on the ball, let alone scoring, from that situation. After a perplexing 4-0 start, we've reverted to the mean. You know it's time to start thinking about your Christmas shopping when City has secured 0-2 points in a four game stretch and the season is rapidly going down the toilet. The most dangerous thing is we'll somehow still be third after a month of rubbish. It would just be classic City for us to go out and belt Newcastle next week, just to rope us all back in. In fact, I'm expecting it.

Probably the most concerning thing for me was that most of our players seemed to have pretty solid games. McCormack didn't play well, but I couldn't find too many others. They're just better than us right now.

Andrew Redmayne. Two clean sheets against us in about 6-8 weeks. He probably kept two clean sheets in his entire time at our club.

Win this and we go at least four points clear on top. Interesting to see what changes Joyce makes with Malik and presumably Jamieson unavailable. Presumably Brattan or Kilkenny is a pretty straight swap for Malik, while Jakobsen switches to left back to bring the other (or hopefully Budzinski, if he's ready to start) into the midfield.

If I had to offer a criticism, I'd say that we should at least give Kilkenny a spot on the bench. He'd be an asset to bring on for the last 5-30 minutes in a range of match situations (including the last 2-3 games) and I think there's a 0% chance that Joyce doesn't call on Killer as that second or third sub if he'd been given a spot on the bench in the past two games. He hasn't bothered to use that third sub in the past fortnight, because it's questionable what value Budzinski and Carrusca would have in that situation. Which probably means it's unnecessary to have both on the bench.

I think that when looking for the positives from an underwhelming win (despite, of course, the fact that we actually have 'underwhelming' wins now, maybe for the first time ever), was again the defence. All of our defenders and Galekovic were absolutely superb again. Everything else was incredibly patchy. Our corners were putrid and if all of our creativity is going to come from the wings, we need to see more Cahill.

If that's not a straight red, I struggle to understand how any tackle can be. It was about as bad as you can get and (obviously) it puts the player at serious risk of a severe injury. Generally I'm against club people whinging about the referees after the game (e.g. Kilkenny in pretty much any postgame interview last year), but I think this is different. Someone from the club has to come out about that and at least draw some media attention to it, because otherwise it will be quickly forgotten and it's not good enough.

I remember the game: the peak of the exciting (but ultimately grossly underachieving) Mooy/Novillo/Fornaroli era. Doing the Easter Monday double straight from the MCG, after Geelong had an unexpected win against Hawthorn. Can't remember who we played, but there was a pre-game helicopter for some reason. We won comfortably and went top of the table. And besides the Elimination Final win, IIRC the entire remainder of the season (pretty sure there were 2-3 matches left of the H&A season) was utter garbage.

It would be so emblematic of this club to cop a draw from this game and then get one additional point from the next three (away to Adelaide, home to Sydney and WSW). So far it looks like a new dawn with City, but I've been wrong before. I took my four year old to her first AFL game this year and she lasted until halftime, which wasn't too bad, I thought. She loved the mascots and banners the best, so I reckon given that an A-League game isn't as long and we have more mascots than you can poke a stick at, she should do OK.

What was the story with the Ronald McDonald socks to recognise McHappy Day? I saw something about the players posing in them, in a social media post that I didn't see until after the game, but haven't seen them anywhere else. Did they wear them in the warm ups or something?

Yeah, the fact that Fitzgerald is a popular choice says a fair bit. I wasn't happy with some of his finishing, but he was absolutely vital in setting up the play for both of our two goals.

One of the all time great "No...no...NO!! YEEEEESSSSS!!!!!" goals that I can remember. Great win. Assuming that I wasn't on my own, thinking a draw would be a decent result. Victory's front half looked outstanding on paper and despite the ball being pretty much permanently up there for the second half, the City defence made them look impotent.

Interesting that the commentators mentioned during the game that it was taking a bit of time for the players to get calibrated with McCormack, as Bruno likes to muscle his way to the front position of his defender to receive the passes then turn them, while Ross prefers to get out the back.

I don't want to be that guy, but it makes me wonder why Brattan needed Joyce to understand that he needed to trim down and get fitter, or even for Fitzgerald to understand that getting extra runs and fitness work in on 'off days' would be beneficial. No sense in dwelling on the past too much, but...I mean, how many times did we score first last year and fail to go on and win? Nobody at the club managed to pinpoint a lack of fitness as an issue and work to rectify it with all the world class training facilities? I'd love to read a behind the scenes book about this club over its firet ten years. I imagine some of the stuff would be mind boggling. Speaking of Joyce, certainly no issue between him and Valkanis, if the prematch footage was any indication. They were chuckling and back slapping like BFFs. Either they're the greatest actors in the world, or they're on the same page.

To me it seemed like while he wasn't firing lasers around the ground, he'd get an important touch in heavy traffic or under pressure to release a teammate in space time and again, If he can do that regularly, he'll deserve to be pushing for a starting spot.

Winning comfortably and rarely being challenged, despite not playing especially well. I'm enjoying the novelty of this feeling.

Outstanding performance, mainly because there is clearly a ton of improvement in this team. Budzinski, Kilkenny, Carrusca and Cahill playing zero-minimal part, just glimpses from McCormack. I think the most promising thing was that basically all of our whipping boys (Kamau, Muscat, Malik, La Rocca, Brattan) played really well. Schenkenveld had a great league debut after a howler to cost us the first goal in the Cup Quarter Final. Jakobsen solid in an unfamiliar role, though he was found wanting a bit for speed at times. And I'll always love the red and white stripes, but geez the new kits look classy.

Tough to argue. Or to pass on your membership to someone else when you know that you definitely can't make it, which, while it is presumably against the rules, common sense would suggest that it's not policed too rigorously, when we routinely get a 75% empty stadium. Or for the club to offer a buyback scheme for unused seats when members know that they won't be attending. I tried to offload my pass without success for this week, but admittedly, I could have been a bit better prepared. I was even considering a kind of timeshare arrangement with my brothers this season, so we could each attend 4-5 home games, but ultimately got one for myself. But you're right: there pretty clearly seems to be great seats that are rarely - if ever - occupied during the season

Fair enough. I guess I was comparing it to the AFL, where Friday night is considered to be a premium time slot and 50,000 at the MCG on Friday night isn't considered the same thing as 50,000 for a 3:30pm start on Sunday. You'd expect to get significantly more on Friday night and for night games in general than Saturday/Sunday afternoon. What it probably shows is that the natural comparison that some (including me) might make to similar start times in the AFL might be a bit simplistic and that an A-League game on Friday night might not be considered any more of a 'blockbuster' to the supporters than the same teams playing the twilight game on Saturday, all other things being equal.

I favour the back streets around the Precinct and East Richmond Station, personally. I like a bit of a walk to and from the game.

That's potentially an option to explore in the future, but not sure that driving to Keon Park (I suppose), or maybe even Camberwell would have made the trip home any quicker tonight than the train to Victoria Park/Clifton Hill, bus to Macleod, train to Watsonia and walk home (or drive from Macleod). I'm not saying that they've made it impossible for me to get home tonight, just that it's given me (and presumably many others, which is the real issue) an excuse to say that they CBF and just watch it at home. At the end of the day it just doesn't take as many obstacles as it used to for me to miss a home game. I didn't even take the Mrs to task when she selfishly went into labour on the afternoon of the Christmas derby last year. Saturday/Sunday I tend to drive rather the train anyway, so I doubt it would have made a difference if it was any other time slot (although night games in general are a little iffy for me right now). It's just the Friday night combo really.

It would be interesting to see the difference for a Victory game at AAMI, or a Stars game at the MCG. I reckon they'd probably push the start time for the works back to 11pm, but that's just a guess.

Not at all. All good. I just think that it's important with our club, when there's such an ongoing issue with generating and maintaining public interest, to recognise that generally the type of supporters who would frequent this forum are probably not the type of supporters that we need to convince to show up on a regular basis to home games and to buy a membership. It doesn't take much for the more casual (or simply more time poor) fans to put attending a game in the too hard basket. My understanding is that the numbers show that in general, Friday night games aren't popular with our supporters in terms of attendance either and it makes sense that a good way to build our support would be to get younger supporters along (Saturday and Sunday games, mainly afternoons). Now, I'm not sure how much sway our club has in terms of dictating what it wants when the fixture is being developed (and whether our demands are ever more sophisticated than "two home games against Victory") and in fairness, it seems like City's hands are tied with respect to these public transport issues, but I hope that the club actually thinks about this sort of stuff and how we can build our attendances over time, because it's the sort of stuff that will easily turn casual supporters and potential supporters off.