By JOSIP ZILIC
North Geelong Warriors’ first home loss of the season brought with it a silver lining, top spot may have been lost but there is a long season ahead and they now have an opportunity to test character and resolve to bounce back into form.
North Geelong face off with Nunawading City on Sunday at Mahoney Reserve, the Eastern suburbs outfit secured it’s first win in NPL2 history against Murray United two weeks ago only to capitulate to Dandenong Thunder with a humiliating 1-10 scoreline last week.
It’s fair to say that Nunawading have had a tough baptism of fire in NPL life, however they are not to be taken lightly.
They possess youthful exuberance and a dash of devil-may-care, which is the right recipe to upset travelling teams when they visit Nunawading.
After establishing themselves on top of the ladder, the Warriors recent form has dipped and the scoring has waned – the ability to put away the lesser types with confidence is there along with solid defensive displays, however there is yet to be a victory over any team in the top half of the competition.
Only St Albans, which the Warriors lost to on Saturday, has a solid 2016 record to date against teams in the top half.
Last Saturday’s loss to St Albans put the Warriors midfield in focus. Plenty of easy possessions were afforded by the opposition but it didn’t result in defining touches to impose on St Albans, and often resorting to longer balls which only played to the visitors’ hands.
St Albans used that to their advantage and counterattacked throughout.
The visitors opened the scoring at 25 minutes, former Warrior Michael Grgic lurking at the back post collected a corner to calmly dispatch it past Daniel Zilic in goals.
After half time the match resumed at a slower pace until the 52nd minute when a rushed clearance from Alex Baird slipped past Matthew Townley and Josh Pugh for Adrian Baressi to charge onto and drill past Zilic.
In customary fashion, the Warriors rallied. Vito Cichello and Matt Thorne were hitting targets to advantage, Nathan Long courageously kept breaking the lines and Nicholas Jurcic was beating his man, drawing fouls and cutting balls back, however the goals were not threatened.
With 10 minutes to go Jurcic zipped into the box and drew Baird off his line, resulting in the St Albans keeper upending Jurcic for a penalty and receiving his marching orders.
Townley stepped up to put the penalty away and bring the subdued Warriors faithful to life.
Despite several other heart stopping moments the match ended in a 1-2 loss.
We’ve seen the quality in character from this North Geelong side before and expectations will be high this week for a positive response.
