Phoenix in Thriller at Stadium

Four­teen and half thou­sand of us watched the Phoenix get their A‑League cam­paign under way with a thrill­ing 2–2 draw at West­pac sta­di­um this after­noon. An estim­ated (by myself and a couple of oth­er self-appoin­ted experts) couple of thou­sand more were stuck in queues for the first quarter and gave up and went home.

Yes, it was anoth­er tri­umph of event tick­et­ing with the com­bin­a­tion of a huge walk-up due to the good weath­er plus a huge pick-up queue for those that booked by phone yes­ter­day caus­ing chaos on Fran Wilde Walk.

If it had­n’t been for Sky and oth­er Asia-Pacific broad­cast com­mit­ments I’m sure the kick-off would have been held back but, as it was, those of us in our seats were treated to an enter­tain­ing spec­tacle with the Phoenix sav­ing their best for a sen­sa­tion­al last 15 minutes.

[Match report after the jump]

A bone­headed hand­ball by Cleber­son in the first-half gave A‑League cham­pi­ons Mel­bourne Vic­tory a pen­alty and thus a first-half lead. Phoenix came out strongly after the inter­val but got hit on the break by a goal from Vic­tory striker Danny All­sopp with about half an hour to go. Some inspired sub­sti­tu­tions from coach Her­bert saw the Phoenix look to get some­thing out of the game as Vic­tory tired.

Daniel made up for his first-half pen­alty miss (back off the cross-bar) with a headed goal from close range on 79 minutes and then on 84 minutes a Smeltz head­er was deflec­ted in off a Vic­tory defend­er. Phoenix had two chances to wrap the game up after that but a Brown­lie shot hit the post and Smeltz headed nar­rowly over.

The buzz com­ing out was enorm­ous and I over­heard sev­er­al soc­cer-moms say­ing it was the best foot­ball game they had ever been to and they would be tak­ing the kids again next time. It was all pretty thrill­ing and the Phoenix play­ers are get­ting the PR side of things right by applaud­ing the huge crowd after the game.