retired_milla0225

Friday 15th July: Report from the Melbourne Age
Author’s note : I should explain. There appears to be a bug in the Australian League whereby I can’t sign any more players, even though I have a spare spot on my roster. I have raised an error report in the Bugs Forum. Anyway I can’t sign players. But I don’t want to pack the game in, so I shall treat it as a transfer embargo

retired_milla0225

Saturday 16th July : The final friendly.

The final friendly and will I have learned anything from all these games? Bonnyrigg White Eagles are the opponents, sounds more like a gay geriatric motorcycle gang to me. Anyway. The fist game proper of the season is still a full week off so I put out what I’d consider to be the first team. The places were now their’s to lose. And they all performed well, no weak performances anyway, they didn’t have to try too hard to look good against this lot. Anyway the game finished 6-0, at least three of the goals down to appalling defending and Vieri got three, Thompson got two and Claeys got the other. A week to go until the season proper and I still don’t know how good my side actually is. I certainly seem to have signed a good player in Vieri though.

Final Score: Melbourne Victory 6- 0 Bonnyrigg White Eagles
These Eagles didn’t soar, bring on the season proper

retired_milla0225

Tuesday 19th July: You call these odds ?

The bookies apparently make us 7-4 to win the league. Sydney are 4-6 on. I’ll put a few quid on us then. What do you reckon ?

retired_jgirl87

Good luck with the season ahead. :thup:

I had that non-signing bug in a Sydney FC that I played. I read on the forums that a few other people had it as well, but I never followed it up to see whether it was properly reported and whether a fix would occur if we ever get a third patch.

retired_milla0225

Don't worry Spav, I have found out a workaround to the signing bug , but it comes later on in the story. Alternativly, look for [Australian League] in the Bugs forum and the answer is there too.

retired_milla0225

And thanks for the good luck too !

Sunday 24th July: The season starts here. The A-League Cup

As a curtain raiser to the new season the powers that be have organised an official pre-season tournament. Just to warm up for the big start as I guess that most teams suffer from a lack of quality opposition to warm up against like we do. Anyway the tourney is as follows, two groups of four. Play each of your group mates once. Top two go to a semi final and then a final. Sounds like those endless one day cricket tournaments they organise round here to me. Anyway we start against the New Zealand Knights at their ground in North Harbour, Auckland.

The team will adopt a modified 4-4-2 formation and will line up as follows:
GK: Galekovic
DR: Muscat
DL: Leijer
DC: Claeys
DC: Byrnes
MR: Kitzbichler
ML: Tadrosse
MC: Pantelidis
MC: Ferrante:
SC: Thompson
SC: Vieri

The ball bobbled about for the first few minutes but as soon as we got meaningful control we powered forward through a neat interchange of passing between Ferrante and Thompson, the ball breaking to Vieri courtesy of a desperate challenge on Thompson, with the Italian/Australian scoring from just inside the box with a low drive. 4 minutes gone. But though we dominated for a period thereafter we couldn’t extend our lead. The NZ Knights were bound to come back into a bit and they did, in style. A thirty yard curling drive from debutant Xiaboin brought the home side level. We came right back into it and after wasted efforts by Ferrante and Kitzbichler we restored our lead on 40 minutes. Good interplay between Kitzbichler and Pantelidis led to the Austrian getting enough space in the middle of the park to be able to slot a ball beyond the defence for Ferrante to burst onto. This he did and made no mistake from the angle 12 yards out. The home side tried to get back in it before half time forcing a very good save out of Galekovic but it was us who extended our lead on 44 minutes. Tadrosse playing in Vieri on the left edge of the box, he took the ball in, drew the keeper and slotted the ball home from a tight angle, a great finish. Indeed a great finish to the half. 3-1 to us.

I told the lads at half time to not let the performance drop as we had dominated the first period for large portions and I wanted to see that continue. Predictably New Zealand Knights came out fighting in the second half. We held them out well, though Galekovic had to make a couple more bright saves, and it was us who extended the lead with the game’s next goal to make it 4-1 on 68 minutes. Tadrosse’s corner on the right headed home by Pantelidis from close range. And though the opposition had a lot of the ball after that they didn’t craft much in the way of a decent chance and the game finished at 4-1 to us. Ferrante was named man of the match for an all action performance, and all in all it was a convincing win.

Final Score: New Zealand Knights 1-4 Melbourne Victory FC
Place in mini-group : 1st
A good win in our first game ‘proper’

retired_jgirl87

Thanks for the advice, chesty. :thup:

I'll do that because I'm sure the urge to play the A-League again will return eventually.

retired_milla0225

Saturday 30th July : A-League Cup Group game – home to Central Coast

The second group game came hard on the heals of the first. This time a home tie against Central Coast. None of the players from the last game had reported anything in the way of niggles or injuries so I went with the same team as started the NZ Knights game, they deserve another go.

We started brightly and scored after only 7 minutes. A long ball from the back was knocked down on the edge of the box by Vieri into the path of the on-rushing Ferrante who took the ball on a couple of strides before slotting it inside the left hand post. A great start. We extended our lead on 22 minutes when a Leijer effort from the edge of the box was parried by the keeper into the path of Archie Thompson who had the simple task of putting the ball into the unguarded net.
On 31 it was three as Beauchamp put through his own net under pressure from Thompson after a cross from the left by Claeys.

Three nil at half time became three-nil at full time as Central Coast were a lot tighter after the break and we seemed to relax a little. Tadrosse was named man of the match.

Final Score Melbourne Victory 3-0 Central Coast
Place in mini-group : 1st
Another excellent performance, another good win.

retired_milla0225

Sunday 31st July So far so good

We had a whole week until the final group match against Queensland, but in a sense it was already academic as we had by dint of our two wins ensured our place in the semi finals already.

retired_milla0225

Monday 1st August Training report

On the first of the month I’d agreed with Aaron Healey, the assistant manager, that he’d provide me with a training report. I let Aaron take training, well, kind of obvious really, because I didn’t want to let on to everyone that I knew not a lot about football. This month Aaron told me that Chris Tadrosse had been slacking when it came to set piece training and that Vieri, Steve Laurie and Anthony Danze were all performing really well in the strength aspects of training. The news about Tadrossse was worrying given our paucity of available talent on the left side. I resolved to ask Geoff Lord to enquire how long Football Australia planned to keep the transfer embargo going. Ahead of that news I sent our scouts out to look for left sided midfielders.