Coburg cruise to crushing win
Posted: 28 May, 2007
| Langwarrin | 0 | — | 5 | Coburg United |
Round 7: Langwarrin v Coburg United — 26 May, 2007
Langwarrin’s promotion hopes were severely dented on Saturday at Lawton Park when table-topping Coburg United cruised to a 5-0 win in a mismatch which was surprising given the home side’s usual defensive strength.
This was to be the game that would test our first team and give all of us a better gauge as to where we stand in terms of the club’s much stated aim of winning promotion to Premier League this season. By game’s end we all knew that we had been soundly thrashed by a very good outfit. We also knew that Coburg is the likely runaway winner of the First Division championship.
As Langwarrin continues to strive for a promotion spot, no doubt goalkeeper Chris Jones will play a pivotal role. The ex-South Melbourne custodian was awesome at times on Saturday and it sends shudders down your spine to imagine what the scoreline might have been in his absence. Let’s look at the first team’s day.
Sweeper Karl Cochrane slipped in the 14th minute and Jones was confronted by a Coburg forward. Jones did well to keep his cool then spring down and grab the ball in an instant and a great chance had been blown by the visitors.
Three minutes later it was Jones to the rescue once more, this time with two world class saves in succession. First up he did well to punch clear then was able to block the resulting shot but his ability to quickly react a second time and again block from the rebound was stunning.
In the 20th minute Davie Breslin played the ball to Tim Paton who controlled it then shot straight at the Coburg keeper. It was to be one of the few times in the opening stanza that Langy got a strike on goal.
Coburg opened its account in the 25th minute and within six minutes it was 3-0 and game over. The first goal came from a corner (and we thought that the two conceded against Casey Comets the previous game were mere aberrations). As the ball was swung in from the left, three Langy players were at the near post but it was Brian MacNicol jumping highest to no effect and the incoming Coburg player sidefooted it neatly into the roof of the net with Jones helpless.
It was 2-0 in the 29th minute and not even Dida would have got to this one. Coburg’s star striker unleashed a 30-metre piledriver that left Jones grasping at air and two minutes later the Langy defence failed to clear a long ball and when Matt Hakvoort missed his desperate, last-gasp attempt to clear Jones was beaten from close range.
The Coburg keeper was much more active in the second half but only had one difficult save to make. The fact that it came in the 90th minute and was from a header by central defender Chris Quinn says it all about Langy’s display.
Coach Gus Macleod shuffled some deckchairs on the Titanic but nothing much could be done. Ali Memedovski replaced Steve Vernon in the 60th minute and Langy switched to three up front with Ben Caffrey central, Paton to his left and Memodovski to his right.
In the last 10 minutes Adam Poole and Darko Djuric also came on, replacing Hakvoort and Caffrey but by then most of us had decided that drinking was the order of the day as we counted down the seconds to the welcome sound of the final whistle.
In between times Jones saved from two more one-on-ones but could only keep the floodgates shut for so long. He did well to get a hand to a shot in the 79th minute, deflecting the ball onto the bar, but could do nothing as the Coburg player struck the rebound firmly to make it 4-0.
Langy’s embarrassment was complete two minutes into time added when Jones again was confronted by a one-on-one, but by this stage he had used up his quota of remarkable saves and it was 5-0.
