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Grand final 2021, Sunday 27th June, AAMI Park, 5.05 pm


kingofhearts
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2 hours ago, jw1739 said:

Yeah, his whole attitude was poor. We took control of the match right from the KO, and could easily have scored in the first few minutes. As for accusing Chris Beath of reffing in City's favour - well, Beathy hasn't exactly been our favourite referee for as long as I can remember!

Brattan was just stupid. And there was another Sydney player who could well have gone into the book at least for chestfronting Beath in the "discussion" before Brattan left the field.

I can’t remember seeing a performance like Brattan’s before. It was seriously weird.

It was like his missus ditched him 5 minutes before kick off or something.

He could have got a straight red (was an “orange” challenge on O’Neill), runs around angry at the world that he’s still on the pitch, then dives in like Muscat a few minutes later. Beath doesn’t act, it’s his last A League gig.

That was Brattan’s first ever red.You have to wonder just what the hell was going on. 

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Just dropping in after a few years away to congratulate and celebrate with you all!

This is a proper footballing side. And to think we achieved it not with bucketfulls of cash & marquee players, but with a team chock full of youth... It really does fulfill everything we were working towards even back in the good old Heart days.

Honestly, I never really got over the CFG takeover. It still shits me to this day that I don't fully feel apart of the club - there were no tears of jubilation last night - but I'm still enjoying watching on and supporting from a distance.

Cheers lads. :up:

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1 hour ago, loriente said:

Just dropping in after a few years away to congratulate and celebrate with you all!

This is a proper footballing side. And to think we achieved it not with bucketfulls of cash & marquee players, but with a team chock full of youth... It really does fulfill everything we were working towards even back in the good old Heart days.

Honestly, I never really got over the CFG takeover. It still shits me to this day that I don't fully feel apart of the club - there were no tears of jubilation last night - but I'm still enjoying watching on and supporting from a distance.

Cheers lads. :up:

Welcome back.

Most of us have felt similarly to CFG (with different degrees of intensity) but over the last say 2 years they have started to embrace the club’s history more and in general have been more inclusive.

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8 minutes ago, Shahanga said:

Welcome back.

Most of us have felt similarly to CFG (with different degrees of intensity) but over the last say 2 years they have started to embrace the club’s history more and in general have been more inclusive.

Indeed they have. E.g. the Champions scarf. I bought them only because the design has red on it. If it had been all City blue and white I would not have gone near it.

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2 hours ago, Shahanga said:

I can’t remember seeing a performance like Brattan’s before. It was seriously weird.

It was like his missus ditched him 5 minutes before kick off or something.

He could have got a straight red (was an “orange” challenge on O’Neill), runs around angry at the world that he’s still on the pitch, then dives in like Muscat a few minutes later. Beath doesn’t act, it’s his last A League gig.

That was Brattan’s first ever red.You have to wonder just what the hell was going on. 

Definitely something going, maybe the pressure of carrying a useless Caceres (watch him as he just let Cola glide past him for our equaliser) on his shoulders in the midfield.

Corica can whinge all he wants but what he doesn't acknowledge is how Brattan conducted himself in the minutes after our first.

Millimetres from a straight red for that awful challenge on O'Neill. Then clearly told the ref to fuck off after another stupid tackle. Whinged some more and then finally took out Luna for the second yellow. All this in about 8 minutes. Like seriously, what else was Beath going to do after giving a yellow and then minutes later being told to fuck off.

Edited by rass
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For me, having watched the game twice on telly so might have been different at the ground, Bratts red was down to Corica's coaching fuck ups. Playing a 4-4-2 it was clear within minutes we were dominating the middle. Caceras was, as always, ineffective at anything that isn't downhill skiing. Bratts has seemingly tried to over compensate and slow our momentum. He just lost his head doing it 

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2 minutes ago, thisphantomfortress said:

For me, having watched the game twice on telly so might have been different at the ground, Bratts red was down to Corica's coaching fuck ups. Playing a 4-4-2 it was clear within minutes we were dominating the middle. Caceras was, as always, ineffective at anything that isn't downhill skiing. Bratts has seemingly tried to over compensate and slow our momentum. He just lost his head doing it 

out of likes - 100%.

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Sydney are an ageing side - Brattan, Barbarouses, Le Fondre, Bobo all over 30. They were over-confident - all this crap about a "three-peat" and thought they were going to win it easily. Their grey kit said it all. Drab and uninteresting, bad tempers the lot of them, just like their coach.

City are very much a "together" club and team, and have been right from the days of Heart.

I'm the world's worst photographer, but this is "the moment" the Championship was ours. The fans at the Northern End celebrate.
1496413790_TheMoment.thumb.png.a7576e784a79d11c8acfabf9834135c2.png

Edited by jw1739
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One of the things i found really interesting in the game was the contrasting approaches of 4-3-3 against 4-4-2. 

With 3 central midfielders we were making interceptions and forcing turnovers (largely controlling the centre of the park), but Colakovski was always outnumbered and our attacking mids were struggling to get around him and link up. On the other hand, our defensive block meant that they couldn't really play through the middle (the obvious exception being their goal).

The strength of their 4-4-2 was that it became a 2-4-4 with the ball and they were showing some good signs of switching the play via Brattan to an open and advanced attacker. Tilio and Atkinson were giving their fullbacks (Retre and King) the space to receive this pass and i thought they were beginning to look dangerous especially down our left their right (Retre/Barbarouses). This was especially true when La Fondre made his runs into the channels pulling our central defence around. The red card completely changed this as they no longer had the width to peg us back. I was a bit surprised Corica didn't go 3-4-2 as that would have been the more attacking response to going a man down. It would have left them open but would also have restricted our space.

I think 4-4-2 has largely disappeared from international and domestic football but i still think Sydney on their day execute it pretty well  and demonstrate its strengths. Contrasting styles between two well drilled teams make for a more interesting game and as such i think the first 35 minutes were really enthralling.  

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4 hours ago, Shahanga said:

I can’t remember seeing a performance like Brattan’s before. It was seriously weird.

It was like his missus ditched him 5 minutes before kick off or something.

He could have got a straight red (was an “orange” challenge on O’Neill), runs around angry at the world that he’s still on the pitch, then dives in like Muscat a few minutes later. Beath doesn’t act, it’s his last A League gig.

That was Brattan’s first ever red.You have to wonder just what the hell was going on. 

 

1 hour ago, rass said:

Definitely something going, maybe the pressure of carrying a useless Caceres (watch him as he just let Cola glide past him for our equaliser) on his shoulders in the midfield.

Corica can whinge all he wants but what he doesn't acknowledge is how Brattan conducted himself in the minutes after our first.

Millimetres from a straight red for that awful challenge on O'Neill. Then clearly told the ref to fuck off after another stupid tackle. Whinged some more and then finally took out Luna for the second yellow. All this in about 8 minutes. Like seriously, what else was Beath going to do after giving a yellow and then minutes later being told to fuck off.

Take it with a pinch of salt but someone posted that after cancer treatment and recovery it was his sisters first game watching him play. Maybe a bit too enthusiastic to get a result, put himself on the line etc. Could be a possible explanation. 

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3 minutes ago, n i k o said:

 

Take it with a pinch of salt but someone posted that after cancer treatment and recovery it was his sisters first game watching him play. Maybe a bit too enthusiastic to get a result, put himself on the line etc. Could be a possible explanation. 

hmmm certainly puts in perspective doesn't it...

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I didn't think these finals mattered. Devalued. And I didn't think we could do it. Had us out at the semis. Well it mattered a whole lot last night. I watched the match with the mates we've been with these past through years and there were grown men in tears last night. I even bumped into the friend who nearly ten years ago talked me into giving Heart a go when we first rocked up from the UK. It was a night for the ages, one I'll remember alongside trips to Anfield and the Millenium Stadium following my home town club. And last night looked like a changing of the guard, and a vindication.

Edited by fensaddler
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56 minutes ago, fensaddler said:

I didn't think these finals mattered. Devalued. And I didn't think we could do it. Had us out at the semis. Well it mattered a whole lot last night. I watched the match with the mates we've been with these past through years and there were grown men in tears last night. I even bumped into the friend who nearly ten years ago talked me into giving Heart a go when we first rocked up from the UK. It was a night for the ages, one I'll remember alongside trips to Anfield and the Millenium Stadium following my home town club. And last night looked like a changing of the guard, and a vindication.

I was thinking about this. It’s head versus heart stuff.

Winning the league being the pinnacle makes sense- best team all year etc etc etc- that’s pure clean logic.

Winning a do or die grand final- that’s your heart, it’s not clean, it’s not pure but what it is unbridled passion!

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1 hour ago, Baka1 said:

Next game will tell us where we’re at

Agreed. Premiership and Championship are nice and all but it’s not even the main event. I won’t be satisfied until we win the ACL and then cap it all off with a Club World Cup. We’re on track but the hardest part is still to come. This was basically just pre season.

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9 hours ago, CityBoyz said:

I just realised that Tsubaki didn’t even make the bench for the GF. 

They can't all make the bench. Maybe he's already gone home? Did anyone see him at the match?

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17 hours ago, Tangerine said:

I was a bit surprised Corica didn't go 3-4-2 as that would have been the more attacking response to going a man down. It would have left them open but would also have restricted our space. 

Would've been suicide. Maybe in the last 5-10 minutes as a final roll of the dice but they were out of gas.

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2 hours ago, Harrison said:

Would've been suicide. Maybe in the last 5-10 minutes as a final roll of the dice but they were out of gas.

Yeah we played expertly with the numerical advantage. Switched the ball often, didn't rush into anything, made Sydney chase us all second half. When they had any brief moment of possession, they had nothing left in the tank to push forward 

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10 hours ago, Harrison said:

Reckon I teared up a little bit watching the highlights package this morning. I was at the damn thing and watched the replay yesterday but it only really hit me this morning just watching the scenes after the final whistle. I’m a grown ass man tearing up at a highlights package.

But who the fuck cares…

My mate and I teared up when that 3rd goal went in. Wild scenes as we have been here since that Thursday night game against the Mariners 11 years ago... 

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32 minutes ago, belaguttman said:

That's our best non-derby crowd by a large margin. We had around 10,000 to the David Villa home game.

Success > celebrity

Bela, that's not like you to be so wrong. The attendances for the two "David Villa" matches were 15,717 and 13, 083.

1 minute ago, MHFC-FAN said:

We had over 18,000 for our ffa cup final against Sydney... 

18,751

 

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