A Victory on Thursday Night
Steve Mactaggart
Fri 10 November 06 9:58 AM EST
A vocal crowd of 22,890 made the special effort of getting to the Telstra Dome on a Thursday night to watch the Melbourne Victory take on the Perth Glory..

The first half was dominated by the Victory with pressure applied all over the ground.  For the first 5 minutes the teams were feeling each other out with the balance of play divided equally, but by the 6th minute the Victory really started to click.  Melbournes forward line was pressing hard up the field putting full pressure on the Glory’s defence leaving no room for error.

The Archie Thompson show was one of the highlights of the first half, with explisive runs down the left flank, Thompson was the Victory player with the most chances, and his attacking lob over a streched goalkeeper only just sailed over the cross bar in the 36th minute.

Two early free kicks deep in the Victory attacking territory setup options for Sarkies to fire some penetrating balls into the attacking zone, but the Glory defence held firm rebounding all attacks presented to it.

By mid way in the first half it seemed that the Glory were set on holding the Victory to a draw with only 1 or 2 attacking moves of their own. It was either Melbournes fitness or Perths unwillingness to run that saw the Victory players cover three times as much ground as the Glory with their hard and fast running opening up many possibilities.  But none of which were converted.

At half time the Glory would have considered themselves winners, holding the Victory to 0-0 at the break.

The second half started out more promising, the Glory had a few early drives gaining territory and the crowd was hoping to see a much more attacking play, allowing for more opportunities to score.  But their hopes were dashed by the 50th minute when it was obvious that the Glory resigned to shut up shop.

In the 55th minute Alessandro took to the field, welcomed by great applause, replacing Caceres and instantly some spark entered the game.  With his fast streaky play and great ball skills he had two great drives within 5 minutes of being on the park.

The game continued in the same fashion as the first half, Melbourne attacking looking for a way through, but with nearly all the Glory players behind the ball there were not any options.

Getting into the last 5 minutes and the crowd were getting restless, Melbourne had been the dominant team of the night, but the Glory’s attitude to defend had sucked the life out of the game.

Then the clouds broke and in the 89th minute Brebner found himself in front of goals with more time that he could hope for.  He used the time to perfections spearing a strike into the left post just outside the reach of the goalkeeper for the match winning goal.  The dome erupted with fans out of their seats celebrating a relief more than anything that the Victory had broken the stone wall.

The remaining time was played out in the fashion we would have loved to see from the start, the Glory actually tried to attack even forcing their only corner of the night in inury time.

Final score: Melbourne Victory 1 defeated Perth Glory 0.
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