John Kosmina has lamented a season of lost opportunity after his side produced a near flawless display against an undermanned Newcastle Jets on Sunday.
The Sky Blues finished an otherwise disappointing season in style securing a 4-0 triumph with arguably their finest performance of the Hyundai A-League 2008/09 season.
“It was a good performance, it shows what a difference a player or two can make as well,” a satisfied Kosmina said.
“I think Simon (Colosimo) was outstanding at the back tonight. He organised things, the shape was good and it gave (Alex) Brosque and (Mark) Bridge a lot more opportunity to get the ball on their feet and the combinations between the two of them were fantastic.”
But Kosmina conceded the result does little to lessen the pain of failing to qualify for the Finals for the first time in the club’s history.
“There’s no substitute for success is there,” he said.
“I mean you look at how we played today and how things worked out and you wonder if – even as up and down as we were during the season – a couple of opportunities we did have like the 3-all against the Central Coast and even leading against Melbourne, that’s five more points all of a sudden and it’s a whole different ball game.”
“But the pressure was off today so I think everyone enjoyed themselves.”
A deflated Gary van Egmond conceded some of his youngsters were ‘found out’ against a more seasoned Sydney FC side.
“We were obviously undermanned and we went down to a goal early on and it snow-balled from there,” he said.
“We then went down by two and if we scored the next goal we probably get ourselves back in the game, but realistically we weren’t in the game.”
“And we lacked that much fire power up front and on the defensive side of things people (were) not tracking and making poor decisions of when to press and when not to press. At the end of the day we were lucky it was only four.”
Despite his disappointment, Van Egmond could not fault the effort of his young charges and dismissed suggestions the showing was his side’s worst of the season.
“It’s a real baptism of fire for them and it’s just a matter of them learning from that and looking to see how they respond to it,” he said.
“There’s obviously a case where they’ve got to get better, a lot of the time we’ve put people in through necessity more so than they’ve earned it and today was very evident of that.”
