Just under an hour had been played in the Big Blue and Melbourne Victory found themselves behind on the scoreboard.
Victory surrendered an early one-goal lead thanks to a Jake Brimmer stunner and had since allowed Sydney FC to wrestle back the ascendancy with goals either side of half-time from Max Burgess and Adam Le Fondre.
The familiar feeling was back. Victory, like they have more times than not recently, were chasing the game again and needed to find a response if they were to turn things around at AAMI Park.
Suddenly, there was an opening as Ben Folami stole the ball of Rhyan Grant inside his own-half and initiated a counter-attack. With the wind in his sails, the young attacker looked up and saw he had a number of options alongside him – including an unmarked Nishan Velupillay.
However, Folami opted to try play through Bruno Fornaroli who was surrounded by a number of Sydney defenders.
Neither were on the same wave-length as his pass meandered past Fornaroli and the Sky Blues backline, and into hands of goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne much to the chagrin of both players who exchanged in a heated disagreement shortly after.
Victory legend Archie Thompson felt as if the moment summed up where the club is currently at, believing it epitomised the frustration players feel when results aren’t going their way – as the club fell to a sixth straight game without a win and remain rooted to the bottom of the Isuzu UTE A-League table.
“Especially when it’s coming from the youngster to a more experienced player that’s been around the traps a long time,” Thompson told Paramount+.
“I didn’t see what sort of pass he was looking for there because there was three men and Fornaroli is not the quickest, but there was an overlapping player. If he had maybe have looked up.
But this is that kind of frustration that this club is really feeling. They’re not getting the results, they’re sitting on the bottom of the table. A club like this, they expect especially the fans and people behind the club to be at a certain level.
“And at the moment, they’re not reaching it.”
Paramount+ host Michael Zappone also asked A-Leagues legend Andrew Durante for his thoughts, having been in similar situations throughout his playing career.
“It’s not uncommon that players have arguments or discussions, but for me that was a little bit over the top – especially because he was in the wrong, because the ball wasn’t on, so he was the one who actually made the mistake, and to continue to go on with Fornaroli,” Durante said.
“Fornaroli, to his credit, he didn’t bite back as much, maybe there’ll be some words in the change rooms that: ‘If you speak to me like that again on the field, there’ll be problems’.
It was a little bit over the top for me, especially like Archie said, a young player to a more experienced player that he should be learning from.
Victory coach Tony Popovic was asked by pitch-side reporter Tim Morgan about the incident post-game, with the former playing down the incident.
“Look, if you’re gonna ask me about that, we’ve got other things to speak about something like whether someone passed or whether someone liked that they didn’t receive it,” Popovic said.