When I woke up just before 10 am on Saturday morning, I was ready for an F3 derby double. 12 hours later, and I was left with nothing but a serious reality check.
First came the revelation (via Lawrie McKinna’s twitter) that the National Youth League match had been postponed but I clung to the faint hope that the A-League would still be on.
Then, @LawrieMcKinna managed to stab me in the heart. Again. “The game looks like being on monday at 7.30 pm”.
Well, that’s my A-League season over. I’ll be climbing Mount Kosciuszko, cuddling koalas and canoeing for all of this week and unfortunately for me, I don’t think Fox Sports broadcasts to Sport & Recreation camps, nor will I be able to use ‘had to go to the A-league’ as an excuse for turning up a day late.
From my perspective, the most disappointing part of the Mariners season has been the lack of talented young players getting game time. The youth team has been topping the table for the majority of the season, yet we’ve only seen brief glimpses of this talented bunch in the A-League.
Most Mariners supporters wouldn’t have a clue that the NYL side were doing so well and that we’d probably have been better off fielding them for the past month than the A-League team. We’re left with little hope that this club has a bright future.
Here’s something to put this into perspective for you: this time last year, Sydney FC’s season was over and John Kosmina was out of a job. But, unlike Mariners fans this season, Sydney FC fans could see that the future looked promising. By the end of November 2008, with injuries and suspensions rife, Kossie was already handing A-League game time to his most talented youngsters.
By the end of the season, Matthew Jurman, Brendan Gan, Rhyan Grant, Kofi Danning, Zac Cairncross and Anthony Golec had all experienced A-League football.
So Sydney didn’t have the best of seasons in 2008/09, John Aloisi failed epicly and they had the highest pass completion rate in the league but not the goals to show for it. At least they had some young, enthusiastic players for the future.
If I were Lawrie McKinna, I would’ve been starting Panny Nikas for months now. I would’ve sat Matt Simon down, explained to him that a striker’s job is to score goals (not lollop around and kick the ball sort of in the direction of the goals) and put Brady Smith in the starting 11 in his place. When Chris Doig was injured, I would’ve given a start to Nathan Sherlock.
Because, to be perfectly honest with you, it really couldn’t have turned out much worse than it has.
At least, had the NYL players been given A-League time, we could’ve made a judgement on whether or not they were up to standard. We also would’ve had the excuse of ‘inexperience and nerves’ for playing so badly rather than ‘I dunno, it just wasn’t our night’.
I’m aware that I’m beginning to sound like a broken record here. I’ve been calling for the Mariners to use youth players since I started writing for FourFourTwo nearly a year and a half ago. Yet, for some reason, it’s never happened to any sort of reasonable extent.
Anyone with two eyes can see that the Mariners haven’t been playing well. We haven’t won since mid-November for goodness sake!
But och aye no. Matt Simon and Kwasaldinho can lead our frontline. Andrew Clark and the departing Nigel Boogaard can run up the sides of defence. And, just in case you were wondering, it is possible to play a 442 with 4 defensive midfielders.
It’ll be our season, next season. Maybe.