Ever since Australia?s successful World cup campaign, football or soccer as its known over here has taken centre stage. Everyone wants a bit of it, whether it?s the English premier league, where everyone now swears to follow a team, the local leagues are being inundated with players registering to play but its the Hyundai A League which has really benefited.
The A league is only two years old this season after a major revamp by the Australia Soccer Federation which saw clubs from each state step up to full time status and join the break away league.

My local club Melbourne Victory had a disastrous season last campaign finishing 2nd from bottom, New Zealand Knights the only team below them without a victory all season! None the less, games were well attended and popularity was growing!

To follow Melbourne Victory seems to be the thing to do nowadays around Melbourne, and with a ground capacity of only 15,000 every game is virtually a sell out!! The ground is an athletics track with two grandstands running along the sides of the pitch, with terracing behind both goals. Melbourne is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, and fans stand side by side on the terraces for one cause.. the VICTORY!

The Victory are coached by scotsman Ernie Merrick, who has imported five Brazilians along with former Dundee player Grant Brebner for the new season. The squad also consists of two current Australian internationals in Kevin Muscat & Archie Thompson while a more familiar face to people in the UK would be Daniel Alsopp formely of Hull City who leads the attack.

The season kicked off on a pleasant Friday evening with an impressive 2-0 home win against last years finalists Adelaide United, a perfect start for Merrick?s men. The ground dwarfed by its surroundings of the Melbourne Cricket Ground just over the footbridge while across the road stands the home of the Australian Open Championship in the Vodafone and Rod Laver centres. The plans are in place however to build a new home for Soccer & Rugby just up the road, but that is still 2-3 years away from being completed.

With the demand for tickets so high and with the arrival of Sydney FC in town, It was decided to switch the next game against Terry Butcher?s men from New South Wales to the Telstra Dome set in the Docklands of Melbourne CBD. A marvelous structured 45,000 seater stadium with a closed roof due. The Melbourne Storm Rugby League team were also due to play at home that evening so the Victory took full advantage of the home game clash at Olympic Park.

The attendance last Saturday evening was an A League record of 39,700 showing up, and again the Victory came up trumps with a battling 3-2 victory. Sydney who were without Dwight Yorke who had transferred to Sunderland two days before the game still took his place in the match programme as Sydney captain. His team mates could have done with him though as they trailed 2-0 and were reduced to ten men all within the first ten minutes. A closed roof, 25 degrees inside, an electric atmosphere, flares, and incidents galore.

Melbourne?s next game is away to New Zealand Knights, and will prove to be difficult trip after they picked up a surprising 1-0 victory over Adelaide to the delight of new manager Paul Nevin, who was managing the Fulham reserve team only a few weeks ago.

Melbourne lead the table on joint points with Queensland Roar, so hopefully by this time in a fortnight the Victory will still be marching on on on!

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 7th, 2006 at 11:07 am and is filed under Melbourne Victory. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.