After a week of turmoil, get along to Skilled Park on Saturday and prove just how much your club means to you.
After a week of turmoil, get along to Skilled Park on Saturday and prove just how much your club means to you.
These are tough times for Gold Coast United. Amid all manner of controversy and languishing at the foot of the ladder, now is the time to get along to Skilled Park and show your support for your club and its players. Grab a ticket for Saturday’s showdown with Melbourne Victory and show the rest of the country that you love United through thick and thin.
Judging by their two previous thrilling encounters this campaign, Saturday’s game is sure to be a cracker. When the sides met in Victoria in Week Eight, there were three penalties, a red card and five goals!
Victory raced into a two-goal lead, thanks to Harry Kewell and Carlos Hernandez’s spot-kicks, before Rody Vargas was sent off for going over the ball on 33 minutes. Back came United, with strikes from Dylan MacAllister and Peter Jungschlager, before Carlos Hernandez’s late header sent the home fans wild and subjected the men from Queensland to a cruel defeat.
Later in the season however, it was United who would score late on to break Victory’s hearts. After Kewell struck with a 25-yard free-kick midway through the second half, Michael Thwaite snatched a point for the visitors with an injury-time equaliser.
While defeat against Victory’s cross-city rivals in Melbourne last week means that United are still without a win in 2012 and remain stuck to the foot of the ladder, fans will be pleased to see how well a side made up primarily of National Youth League graduates acquitted themselves against a team that, until its winless run, was challenging for top spot.
With captain Thwaite suspended, 17-year-old Mitch Cooper wore the armband and led a side that had just one player – Kristian Rees – over the age of 23. The team played with the fearlessness of youth and were close to earning a fine draw until an Eli Babalj goal late on did the damage. Still there was enough about their performance to suggest that, on home soil this Saturday, they could pick up a better result against the other club from Victoria.
They take on a Melbourne Victory side that also suffered a narrow defeat last weekend. Harry Kewell struck twice but still couldn’t save his team from defeat in Queensland on Saturday. The marquee man almost single-handedly kept Victory in the game against the reigning Premiers with an attacking master-class. Firstly, he cancelled out Besart Berisha’s first-minute strike and then pegged the score back to 3-2 early in the second-half.
Had Carlos Hernandez’s volley hit the net rather than rattled the bar, Victory would have been celebrating an unlikely point. The result leaves them five points outside the top six and with it all to do if they are to catch up, so they’ll be desperate for a win this weekend.
Get yourself down to Skilled Park and witness cracking Hyundai A-League action for yourself, as United’s players try to show that, whatever is going on behind the scenes, they will strive for three points on the field.
