It’s very fitting that Armistice Day is during the A League season. The history of our game was immensely effected by the First World War. Thousands of the Australian casualties in the war were both football players and supporters.

Post war, the game in this country was a shadow of itself and it took many decades to recover. Ian Syson's book, The Game that Never Happened, is a timely reminder of this forgotten history.

Melbourne Victory 4 - 1 Central Coast Mariners

Back at AAMI Park Victory stormed through the first half despite spurning some early chances. Keisuke Honda, however, made no mistake when he was gifted an opportunity by Mariners' defence.

Victory’s midfield looked a lot more dynamic this week. Central Coast found it very hard to deal with their movement into the channels and the numbers Muscat’s men had in the midfield. These factors proved too tough for the Mariners to handle in the first 45.

Meanwhile, the Mariners have some very big questions to answer this week. They have possibly their best playing list in years. What has gone wrong? Did the Usain Bolt distraction prevent them from gelling as a team? It’s still early in the season but the last two games have been poor.

Melbourne Victory

Lawrence Thomas – 6
Didn’t have anything to do until Shabow accidently scored. He then came up with one or two important contributions.
 
Storm Roux – 6

Victory found a lot of joy down the righthand side in the first half. A lot of that was from the hard work of Storm Roux.

Thomas Deng – 5.5

Looked a little shaky in his first start of the season. He settled into the game though and defended well.

Georg Niedermeier – 5

So far Victory’s new foreign centre half has been less than convincing. It’s been a very profitable recruitment strategy for Muscat, find an experienced European pro to take charge of the defence. It’s only round four but so far he hasn’t looked as assured on the ball as the foreigners who played there before him. Looks dangerous going forward off set pieces though. Should have scored.

Corey Brown – 6.5

Muscat was definitely looking for a certain type of fullback when he recruited Storm Roux and Brown. Both men have engines that might not be entirely street legal. Let’s just keep that on the down low. His hard work was rewarded when the ball fell to him in the box.