Tom Love will be in the crowd for the Australia Cup’s Adelaide Derby this week, eight years after goal caused a boilover, writes Tom Smithies.
It took Tom Love about a week to realise what he’d done. Eight years later, almost to the day, he still gets friends talking about that goal, the one that caused the first raging upset of a brand new cup competition.
As the Australia Cup focus zooms in on South Australia this week, for Adelaide’s version of a City v United derby, Love will be in the crowd at Marden Sports Complex to see if anyone can emulate the way he created the competition’s first major upset on the same stage in 2014 – at an age when he wasn’t even old enough to buy a drink in celebration.
Adelaide City must be optimistic of dumping their A-Leagues neighbours out of the Australia Cup after winning their first NPLM SA Premiership since 2016, confirming the title with a 6-0 win on Saturday. But when Western Sydney Wanderers came to face City in 2014 – two months before they would go on to be crowned champions of Asia – there was rather more hope than expectation.
“Those kind of games are the best!” Love recalls now for KEEPUP. “You go into every game thinking it’s winnable but still – up against one of the best teams in Australia, you’re not really expecting too much.
“You don’t have too many expectations of yourself, it’s risk-free in a sense. But in the end – what an experience.”
There was definitely something in the freezing air of Marden Sports Complex that night – for a start there were some 2,700 home fans dreaming of an upset (plus not many more Western Sydney followers than you could count on a be-gloved hand). As sporting director Charlie Capogreco – with three decades of service at Adelaide City to his name by then – pointed out, they were usually lucky to get more than 400.
In one sense the game was uncharted territory, coming in the first year of what was then the FFA Cup, allowing the A-League Men teams to be matched against some of the grand old names of Australian football heritage.
To add to the nostalgic narrative, City were coached then by Damian Mori, goalscoring royalty in the old NSL. As the clock ticked down towards the last 15 minutes and neither side had scored, the nerves seemed to spread like an oil slick – except for a 17-year-old who found the presence of mind to create history.
Picking up the ball just inside his own half, Love raced forward and left four defenders in his wake. Ante Covic in the Wanderers goal – whose winning performance in the AFC Champions League final weeks later would create its own history – raced off his line but Love stayed calm enough to steer the ball past him. Bedlam ensued.
“I think everyone was pretty knackered by that stage of the game – I don’t really like using the phrase ‘park the bus’ but as the game went on I think there might have been a bit of that if I remember,” Love says.
“Marden’s quite a big pitch when compared to the rest of them in South Australia as well so we were all pretty pooped by that stage.
“But then it all just happened so quickly. I got the ball and looked forward and didn’t really expect to get that far. Let’s just say that before I knew it I looked up and I was face to face with the keeper and kind of just slotted it.”
It’s lucky that Love has recently moved into residential property valuations rather than a marketing career because that’s rather underselling his goal; thrilling in its own right, let alone in the context of the tie.
But then it took some time for him to realise its magnitude, even in his own mind. “It was probably like a good week or so afterwards that it started to sink in – to be honest after the game I just went out and hung out with my mates afterwards. Like, I told them what had happened but I didn’t really think much about it.
“But then I had news interviews and stuff the next day, and that was pretty eye opening to the extent of what we’d actually done. It was pretty cool. There was all this hype around it, pretty amazing just to understand the extent of it.”
The two coaches that night were a study in contrasts; Western Sydney boss Tony Popovic looked like he’d bitten into a wineglass, while Mori’s beam was all-encompassing.
“Someone sent me the Nine News clip (about the game) the other day, and seeing Damian’s smile, it’s imprinted on my memory,” Love says.
“With the Wanderers, it was almost like they were embarrassed to be the first team to have lost to like a local league team. I can’t imagine they would have been too impressed. I don’t think their coach was.”
Love wears a suit these days for his new job in the property industry – “it’s my first year and I’m just trying to make the best out of it, it’s a good industry to be involved in.
“I’m still playing for Damian, I moved to White City last year to join him and we got promoted (from NPL2). We just lost on the weekend so we’ve missed out on the finals this year.
“But I’ll definitely be at the Australia Cup game on Wednesday, for sure. Those games are the best…”
