Wolves 2 -1 North Queensland Fury – Match Review by Tom Barratt

By: Toby | July 16th, 2009

So Glory vs Nth Queensland ends our little Antipodean adventure.

The Wolves lined up like so:

Ikeme
Zubar, Balde, Berra, Hill
Halford, Henry, Milijas, Friend
Keogh, Vokes

Unfortunately traffic on Vincent street meant that I got to the ground a touch after kickoff, and when I arrived 6 minutes into the first half, Wolves had already scored. This time it was the second minute and apparently (according to the website, and corroborated by my uncle) their keeper didn’t deal with a shot, pushing it into the path of Keogh who couldn’t miss.

We played with a little more pace and endeavour, although Balde did put himself under pressure on one occasion losing the ball. Zubar looked more as a centre half last time than a right back this time, the difference between him and Kevin Foley was marked.

By the way – Kevin Foley’s positional sense is outrageously good, I spent 3 or 4 mintues in the 2nd half just watching him, and he is class.

While we never really troubled their keeper, we did look a little threatening and Milijas hit a good 30 yard shot, but their keeper dealt with it easily. We only really turned their defence once with Keogh firing into the side netting for

Second Half: Fury 1, Wolves 1, Referee 1, Linesman 1.

Hennessey
Foley, Craddock, Stearman, Ward
Halford, Edwards, Surman, Jarvis
SEB, Vokes

We made 9 changes at half time, with only Vokes and Halford playing for 90 minutes. My camp had moved to “The Family Stand”, which is far away from the hilarious, good natured but MA15+ rated Glory Shed, who you can see at the bottom of the photos.

They actually created a good counter-attacking move but shot wide, Robbie Fowler was brought on and converted a penalty given away by Jody Craddock. It was at the far end, but the replay looked like it was a fair decision.

SEB then had a goal disallowed by fan anti-favourite linesman Cheesman for offside.

However conceeding had spurred Wolves into action, and I think they went from 2nd gear up to 3rd until we forced home our 2nd from a corner by Jody Craddock at the far post heading home despite the best efforts of NQld on the line.

Sam Vokes then had a goal ruled out by the ref for pushing. The last 15 minutes were controlled by Wolves, with Vokes heading just over and SEB hitting the post. We never really took anyone on with the ball at our collective feet, but our passing was measured and controlled, and we saw it out for another imaginary 3 points down under.

The crowd swelled to 14 900 for the Fulham game, when the heavens opened (despite perfect weather for the Wolves game). Glory started very strongly, faded badly in the rain (it doesn’t rain much here so I assume that Glory haven’t learnt to play in the rain) and lost 5-0. However, Glory’s new signings looked good and all appears to be progressing for the next A-League season.

So with three clicks of Andy Keogh’s red boots the Wonderful Wolves of Oz (see that reference there, couldn’t resist) will be back in the Black Country on Friday, leaving this corresondent somewhat redundant, but grateful to Glory for arranging this trip, Wolves for coming and this season I even have the ability to watch Wolves every week.

A great quote here from a Fury Fan site on our very own big George.

Adriano Pellegrino again worked tirelessly down the right hand flank, even whilst having to deal with an absolute monster of a left-back. Watching the 5′7″ Pellegrino attempt to win headers against a man who didn’t even have to jump for them was worth the price of admission alone; as was the laughable refereeing decisions that saw “Pele” penalised for impeding his opponent. Honestly, saying that Adriano was impeding that full back is like saying a pebble could impede a bulldozer; even if in this case it’s a bloody tenacious pebble…

Fantastic find by Tom again!