The North Queensland Fury may have gone within minutes of toppling A-League leaders Brisbane Roar on Saturday night, but despite conceding the heart-breaking late-equaliser, coach Franz Straka is well-satisfied with the result.
The Fury had been on a three-game skid, losing to Gold Coast, Central Coast and the Melbourne Heart, and Straka was taking heart from his side’s tide-turning 1-1 draw against the competition pace-setters.
“I’m very happy to take a point, it was so important after three defeats,” he said.
“The team played very well tactically with high discipline. They did their best today on the field.”
Leading 1-0 after only nine minutes of action, the visitors plunged straight into preservation mode, playing the full 11 behind the ball as they dug in and fought for the result.
Both Straka and Fury captain Ufuk Talay were ready to admit that it hadn’t been the most aesthetically pleasing match, but sitting in last-place going into the match, they knew that competition points had to be the priority
“Like the gaffer said, our style probably wasn’t very attractive, but that was the key to get a result here and we needed a result to move up the table,” Talay said.
“You’ve got to win games to get three points to keep pushing up in the table. We’ve got a lot of games coming up and obviously we want to get points on the board.”
“We needed a result to push up and it was always going to be a tough game. We were going to show that we were there to play, so it wasn’t going to be an easy game for Brisbane Roar.”
Despite the satisfaction with the draw, the night could easily have turned out a great deal sweeter had Jason Spagnuolo been able to hit the open net in the 55th minute.
The lead-up work from David Williams was exceptional and Spagnuolo’s miss beggared belief. A successful effort t would almost certainly have sealed the win, but the Fury skipper wasn’t about to put the boot into his hard-working teammate.
“No player wants to go out there and miss a chance. Obviously he’ll be disappointed missing that. If we scored that we go up 2-0 and that might have killed the game,” Talay said.
