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Sitting in my office after training that afternoon reading through some coache's reports, i herd a beep come from my cpu, then i saw the pop up saying that my boss Wlater Bgno had sent me an email. It was the A-League title odds, from the bookmakers.
I pick ed up the phone, and made a quick call over the intercom, to Walter.
"Hey Walter. Are you busy?"
"No i' not. Did you get my email?"
"That's why i called. I can't believe they have us evens co-favourites to win with Perth and Newcastle."
"Yes i know. I don't believe it either. We'll just have to work hard and prove to the bookies wrong in their decision to make us co-favourites instead of outright favourites."
"You are right. Anyway i'll see you later Walter."
Our official competition games began today, with the our first match in the A-League Pre Season Cup. We had been drawn nto group A, along with Newcastle Jets, Perth Glory and Queensland Roar. As always, my expectations were that we would win this competition. Only time would tell whether my expectations were right. But for now we had the challenge of Perth Glory to overcome. Lucky for them they had home ground advantage at Perth Stadium. Still I didn't want to let that bother me.
I had come up with my line up the night before.
(GK)Clint Bolton
(DR)Mark Milligan
(DL)Alvin Ceccoli
(DC)Jacob Timpano
(DC)Brett Studman
(MR)David Carney
(ML)Andrew Packer
(MC)Steve Corica
(MC)Ufuk Talay
(ST)Dwight Yorke (C)
(ST)Sasho Petrovski
I decided that for now i would stick to a 4-4-2 atack formation, what the other teams didn't know was that I would change that for the league matches. Brett Studman was handed his official debut for the club, while Barcena, Danze, and Parisi, waited on the bench for their chance at an official debut. van Dommele though i felt wasn't ready yet to make his debut. I felt i needed to play him in the under 20's for a little while longer just to strengthen him up a bit.
The match didn't go too well for us in the first half. Despite spending 3/4 of the first half in their side of the pitch, it was Perth who struck first, in the 34th minute, through their English import Brian Deane. We responded in very quick fashion, with Sasho Petrovski drawing the keeper out and passing to Dwight Yorke who had nothing in front of him but an open goal. We wnet in at half time 1-1, but i couldn't say i was pleased. We needed a win. We wanted a win. I decided to try something a little different. I took off Ufuk Talay and brought on Franco Parisi, pushing Dwight Yorke into a central midfield role and pouting Franco Parisi up front where he is strongest. This was followed 20 minutes later by the replacement of Brett Studman by Matthew Bingley, to get some fresh legs on the field, in the 71st minute. Nothing seemed to work in the end, and the score remained at 1-1, which meant we needed to win our final two group matches, against Newcastle and Queensland, or risk being eliminated from the competition.
The draw with Perth really dented myplans of going at it for two games and allowing myself to relax in the third. Now i had two more games i really needed to work at. For the next match, against Newcastle Jets, I made one change. I took out Ufuk Talay, and brought in Anthony Danze for his official debut.
(GK)Clint Bolton
(DR)Mark Milligan
(DL)Alvin Ceccoli
(DC)Jacob Timpano
(DC)Brett Studman
(MR)David Carney
(ML)Andrew Packer
(MC)Steve Corica
(MC)Anthony Danze
(ST)Dwight Yorke (C)
(ST)Sasho Petrovski
This game started off even better than the last for us. Again we spent most of the first half in their side of the field, but this time it was us who broke the deadlock, with Dwight Yorke grabbing a goal off a Steve Corica through ball, in the 24th minute. Things continued to get better for us, as in the 27th minute, Sasho Petrovski crossed the ball in from the left to give Dwight Yorke his second goal as the striker headed the ball into the back of the net past an absolutely stunned Liam Reddy. In the 34th minute however, Richard Johnson scored for the Jets, bringing the score back to a one goal deficit, at 2-1. Dwight Yorke still had alot more petrol in the tank, as in the 38th minute, he stole the ball right from Reddy's feet and put it into the back of the net, to complete his hat trick. That still wasn't enough for captain Dwight Yorke, as he showed off his experience, by taking on 5 defenders and the keeper, puting the ball into the back of the net again in the 40th minute, to make it four for the night so far. 4-1 at half time and i was thrilled. In the 57th minute, i noticed Yorke limping around a little, so thinking about the coming games, i decided to rest my star striker and brought on Franco Parisi in his place. Parisi made an immediate impact, setting up Petrovski for the team's fifth goal, in the 62nd minute. By then we had the match well and truly won. In the end nothing much happened in the final 10 minutes, and the score ended up 5-1.
I went for my usual morning run again this morning, with my mate Dean, who lived a couple of doors down from me. Like usual, we met outside my place, only this time we met a little later than usual, at 09:30 am, rather than 07:30 am. We went along as usual, turned the corner, made our way another 20 minutes down the road again, and the turned into a quiet street to our left, and continued on. Ahead of us were two gorgeous ladies, taking a walk up ahead. As we neared them for a joke as sort of a pick up line i turned to Dean and said:
"You know what they say about a woman's pace when she walks don't you?"
"No I don't, what do they say?"
"Well it determines what they are like in bed."
At that time the one who was standing right infront of me, turned yelling and screaming, and began chasing me back down the road.
"You pig how dare you say something like that i don't even know you and you are giving me a hard time about how fast i walk!!! Come back here you incensitive pig!!!"
As i pulled away from her i turned and noticed she had stopped chasing me, so i turned and went back towards her. The whole time neither of us noticed it, but we actually knew eachother. Infact, we worked with eachother. And only as I got closer to her did we both notice it. It was Jamie. My personal assistant. We stood there for a inute just looking at eachother.
"Why would you say something like that?"
I couldn't handle it any longer. So i leant over and kissed her on the lips.
After we had kissed for at least 10 seconds, she took a step back with a look of shock on her face. The next thing i knew, we were all over eachother.
The rest of the day Jamie and I went back to my place, and spoke about everything from our past to now, what we like and what we don't like. I was so surprised at how much we had in common. Actually she too was of Greek backgrond, well i knew that already because of her last name, but her Greek name isn't Jamie. It was Dimitra.
Such a good day, was ruined though, when Ian Crook, my assistant manager called me with the worst news that i wanted to hear. It turns out I made the right decision taking off Yorke in yesterdays game. if i had kept him on, he would have been out for a month roughly, rather than 2 weeks. This meant that for our match against Queensland, i would bring Parisi into the starting line up to pair with Petrovski and promote Salazar to the bench.
It was around 21:30 before Jamie left, she stayed to help me pack a small bag for my trip tomorrow morning. I was going up to Queensland, to watch their match against Perth Glory. We were only able to manage a draw with Perth, and so i wanted to scout out the Queensland side to see what weaknesses they had and where their strengths were.
I walked Jamie, or Dimi as she now wanted me to call her, to her house, which to my surprise, was only two blocks away from mine, and said goodnight to her as we got to her front gate.
"Well...um...goodnight. I'll see you on Monday at the office."
"Yeah. Have a good trip. Call me when you get there."
"I will. Bye."
With that I made the short walk back to my place reminiscing about the day that had just been, but at the same time trying to think about how much the blow of yorke would affect the team.
The 2nd of August brought more bad news. As I walked through the club gym, watching the players during their weight training, i walked past Alvin Ceccoli and noticed a look of pain in his eyes, that he wa trying to hide.
"There is no use trying to hide it Alvin. Where does it hurt. I'd rather be sure you are right for Saturdays game, than risk even worse damage."
"Its my wrist coach."
"Lets have a look. I'll call one of the physios over to take a better look but i wouldn't think it is anything major. Alex can you come and take a look at Alvin for me?"
"Sure thing boss."
Alex Webb inspected Alvin Ceccoli's wrist for a few minutes, then said.
"It's just a sprained wrist. I would say 2 weeks out until he will be fully right to play. Sorry boss."
"That's ok Alex. I would rather he be fit and ready for the league anyway. Rest it well Alvin. I still expect to see you at training though. Ok."
"No worries boss."
This blow meant that I had to use my only other left sided defender. Young Adam van Dommele. I may not have thought him ready yet, but he would get his chance on Saturday to prove me wrong.
Perth Glory played host to Newcastle Jets today in the other A-League Cup Group A match. We were playing tomorrow, so this match was of great interest, because if Newcastle won, both us and Queensland Roar would go through. If Perth had won though, we would need to win tomorrow to ensure that we go through.
The match was being televised by Fox Sports, so I invited Dimi over to watch it with me. Lucky for me, the match ended with Newcastle winning 3-1. We were through no matter what happened tomorrow.
"You pig how dare you say something like that i don't even know you and you are giving me a hard time about how fast i walk!!! Come back here you incensitive pig!!!"
The match started off really well, with Parisi grabbing his first official goal for the club in the 12th minute. In the 23rd minute however, Queensland pulled it back to 1-1 through Massimo Murdocca. It wasn't enough to hold us back though, as Petrovski put us up 2-1 in the 27th minute. Again Queensland equalized when Pierre put it past Bolton in the 45th minute. In the end it ended 2-2, as nothing i could do would spark anything. We settled for 2-2 as we were still in firt place in Group A.
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