AT LAST A CROWD.....

 

The player that's scored against Chelsea as many times as Messi has!, Tasman United's Ben Wright The JourneyFan

WELLINGTON PHOENIX RESERVES 2 TASMAN UNITED 3

ISPS Handa Premiership

Dave Farrington Park

Sunday 11th March, 2018

Attendance : 110

With the threat of another cyclone hitting Wellington, the city turned around, put two fingers up at it and put on yet another stunning day. So stunning that despite the Hilton Petone tournament being in full swing and many other social teams having pre-season friendlies, the Weenix managed to attract what was possibly their biggest crowd of the season outside of the Welclassico derby. OK it was only about 110 but that is much better than the 50-60 that usually turn up and it was a surprise as when I arrived just as the teams were heading on to the field there were only about 20 people in the ground! 

It was even more of a surprise as there was effectively nothing riding on this game apart from pride. The top four had been decided before the rounds started being split due to the Oceania Champions League, with just the exact placings to sort out, leaving the bottom six to fight it out for best of the rest.

Tasman United are leading the pack in this race and must be ruing their terrible home form that has seen them win only one game there all season. The Weenix seem to have taken up the mantle of the bignix and have settled in near the foot of the table, but for then its about development rather than results so its no real surprise, although I'm pretty sure the players would quite like to be in a team that wins more often than they do!

Weenix keeper Oli Sail gets a hand to a shot (but Tasman score the rebound) The JourneyFan

Tasman opened the scoring after 10 minutes when the forgotten man, Phoenix keeper, Oli Sail made a great one handed save, well it would have been great had it not fallen to Maksym Kowal who tapped it in. The Phoenix pulled one back when Monty Patterson scored from the penalty spot, only for Paul Ifill to do the same for Tasman a minute later and give them a 2-1 lead going into half time. It stayed fairly even in the second half, both teams had chances but good goalkeeping from Sail and Tasman's Corey Wilson kept the score the same. When Ollie Whyte evened up the score it looked as if the game would finish in a draw which would have been a fair result. But if the Weenix are developing you'd hope by now they'd learnt that a game goes for 90 minutes plus the referees added time. There were four minutes of it in this game and after two of these a cross found Paul Ifill unmarked on the six yard line who made no mistake with his 12th goal of the season to give Tasman a 3-2 win.

It was the last Wellington home game of the season for the Weenix, they have another "home" game next weekend but it is in Auckland against Auckland City as a curtain raiser to the A-League game, Wellington Phoenix v Newcastle Jets being played up there.  

FOR PHOTOS FROM THE GAME CLICK HERE

 

Paul Ifill (Tasman United) scoring the winning goal The JourneyFan