Wellington Phoenix will appeal against the red card shown to Mirjan Pavlovic in their scrappy 1-0 A-League win against Perth Glory.
Wellington Phoenix will appeal against the red card shown to Mirjan Pavlovic in their scrappy 1-0 A-League win against Perth Glory.
Pavlovic, who came on in the final quarter for Dani Sanchez and won the corner that led to Ben Sigmund’s winner, was sent-off by referee Ryan Shepheard deep into stoppage time for a cynical challenge from behind on Steve Pantelidis.
“We’ll appeal it. I think it’s in our rights to do that,” said coach Ricki Herbert.
“We’ll see what the outcome is and we’ll accept whatever the outcome is.”
That red card and a groin injury suffered by left back Tony Lochhead late in the game took some of the shine off the much-needed win which was secured by Sigmund’s header with five minutes of regular time to go.
Lochhead has a history of groin problems and Herbert admitted it was unlikely that the All Whites defender would be available for Wednesday night’s match against Brisbane Roar in Dunedin.
Saturday’s game against Glory at Westpac Stadium was one for the purists. It was a scrappy, often ill-tempered affair, where chances for either side were few and far between.
The yellow cards certainly came thick and fast for the Phoenix though with Paul Ifill, Lochhead and Tim Brown all booked before the break.
Perth’s Todd Howarth and Josh Mitchell then saw yellow in the second half before Pavlovic’s sending-off.
“It was a bit of a wrestle,” Herbert said of the stop-start match.
“But you get that a little bit with Perth. They are very direct and strong and in your face.”
“We probably struggled to get the ball moving like how we’ve done over the last couple of weeks.”
“But there was maybe only one team that was going to win it in the second half even though it was a little bit scrambling at the end with them being desperate too.”
“It was a very good goal from Ben and I’m pleased. It was a clean sheet, at home. A good three points.”
At times both teams appeared to be frustrated with the refereeing but Sigmund felt they had been able to keep their emotions in check.
“I just think the (referee’s) consistency was just a little bit all over the place,” he said.
“There was potential for it to boil over and for us to lose our cool and I thought we held our composure and just battled through it.”
The pre-match talk had centred on whether Ifill would overtake Smeltz as the Phoenix’s leading goal-scorer.
In the end it was Sigmund, a good friend and All Whites team-mate of Smeltz, who stole the headlines.
“Smeltzie steals them quite often so it’s nice to keep him quiet and scoreless,” said the affable Phoenix central defender who was just as pleased Wellington kept a clean sheet.
“You always feel threatened when they’ve got Smeltzie up front. He’s a quality player and I just remembered the game in Perth that he only had one opportunity and he scored it and that’s all he did all game.”
“If you give him that second or any time he’s the type of bloke that is going to bang it in the back of the net. I was determined, and so were the whole back four, to not let that happen again.”
