A crowd of 3800 at Kingston Heath and a national television audience watched as Bentleigh Greens’ long season finally came to an end with an honourable quarter final exit from the FFA Cup on Tuesday night when it lost 2-0 to Cup holder Melbourne Victory.
Second half goals to new Victory signings Marco Rojas and James Troisi settled the tie in the A-League team’s favour but not before the Greens gave a good account of itself especially in the scoreless first half when the full time professionals of Melbourne Victory, replete with international and European League experience, struggled to break down the part timers from Kingston Heath.
Both coaches set their teams out in a 4-3-3 formation, and as expected Victory dominated possession in the opening stanza with its quick passing and movement, but came up against a resolute Bentleigh defence led capably by Jack Webster and Ross Archibald. Victory midfielders Troisi and Oliver Bozanic had shots at goal saved by Greens keeper Ryan Scott in the first half. After the Greens weathered Victory’s opening surge, Bentleigh managed to threaten the Victory goal on a couple of occasions with playmaker Tyson Holmes shooting narrowly wide after a deflection off a Victory defender. It would’ve been a doubly memorable occasion for Holmes who had earlier in the day greeted the arrival of his first born.
Bentleigh seemed well satisfied with their first half work, going into the break without conceding. However a yellow card to Greens left back Dion Kirk for a late tackle on his fleet footed opponent Marco Rojas, seemed to signal a loosening of the tight grip on the Victory forward line. Twenty minutes into the second half, a turnover of possession on the Greens’ right flank gave Bozanic the chance to drive to the by-line and send a perfect cross to Rojas to volley home from close range. Five minutes later, Victory tightened its grip on the match when a fast Rojas break gave full back Jason Geria a chance to cross from the right by-line, to find Troisi on the edge of the box, who fired a deflected shot home for Victory’s second goal. Greens keeper Scott saved further shots from Bozanic and Rojas and Berisha hit the upright, ensuring the score remained 2-0 in favour of the visitors.
Bentleigh Greens coach John Anastasiadis commented after the match, “The boys were pumped for this game. We’ve had a couple of disappointing results before this, that game against Oakleigh and Edgeworth and they really wanted to make amends by playing someone like Victory and making a statement. I thought they did that for most of the game, 60-65 minutes and there’s no doubt, you could see on their faces in the rooms after the game, they were disappointed.”
Reflecting back over the season, coach Anastasiadis said ” Like I said to the boys after the game, if someone had said to me, three trophies before the start of the season, I would’ve taken it. There’s no doubt in the end we lacked the fitness that professional teams would have unfortunately. It was disappointing those last few games against Oakleigh and Edgeworth. What didn’t help us was a lot of the FFA Cup games we played went for 120 minutes. It’s been a really long season for us. I think the club has made a pact that what we’re going to do is decide what competitions we want to be successful in and what we can’t do.”
Melbourne Victory’s win over the Greens means it progresses to the FFA semi-final stage for the second year in a row, when it will play in another Melbourne derby, this time against A-League rival Melbourne City.