The Crossbar : There’s a little Big Kev in all of us

To borrow a line from one of the great entertainers of all time Dwayne Johnson aka ‘The Rock’:

FINALLY, The A-League has come back………

The wait is over, the football is back, ‘We Are Football’ and we are as excited as Big Kev that its back. What a way to kick it off with some fantastic fixtures that saw the opening round attendance figures broken, a number judged rightly or wrongly as the biggest KPI in our game.

We had a smorgasbord to look forward to over the 209 days since Henrique put the winner past Joe Marston Medallist Matt Ryan in that epic decider at Suncorp Stadium.

Whilst Harry and Emmo stole most of the spotlight we had some others sneak under the radar. Liam Miller springs straight to mind, who in other seasons would have been top of the recruits listings.

We kicked off on Super Saturday with a team in turmoil after sacking their coach and trying to scissor up a contract of their marquee man get over the top of a team whose coach is now the one under the most pressure in John Van’t Schip. The second least likeable Griffiths boy was outstanding and will need to be for the rest of the year if the Newcastle Jets are going to be serious contenders.

Big ups to our man Mate Duganzic who scored a double for his new Melbourne team. If only the headline ‘Heart Break’ hadn’t been used ad nauseam, it would have been perfect this week after the 93rd minute Byun winner.

The big one on Saturday night pretty much delivered on everything apart from the goals. I likened it to one of those summers BBQ’s where you get all you can drink Coronas and great steaks but someone forgot the tomato sauce.

Harry was sensational whilst Emmo by his own admission was not so good. But ‘keepers Covic and Reddy were brilliant, but I want it to go on the record that Marcos Rojas I think will be the best thing to come out of New Zealand. EVER. This kid is electrifying in the true sense of the word. A serious talent, so watch out Dave Dobbin, your 15 years of fame is just about up.

Brisbane Roar continued to do what the Roar do and that is win, and to no-ones surprise here at The Sack (apart from Chief of Staff Christian Layland). Mitch Nichols was man of the match scoring the winner. I don’t use the man of the match term lightly but anyone who can put one past Matt Ryan is good and deserving. Ryan is a star in the making, a future Socceroo there is no doubt. Hopefully he gets himself a good stylist when he makes it big time because that hair-do aint going to cut it.

I was a little nervous about the first game on Sunday as most of us here predict that the ‘Nix and the Gold Coast will be holding up the table but it turned out to be a half decent contest. Didn’t the sub editors ‘Feel good’ when James Brown scored the equaliser. James Brown was even trending on Twitter Sunday night. I for one hope he scores plenty and then becomes ‘the godfather of goals’. Yeah I went there.

The closing game wasn’t too bad either. The Glory’s finishing in the first half was worse than this but at least they were creating chances. Billy Mehmet is a big bad lad and will get under the skin of plenty of opposition fans as the year goes on and he will score plenty too. Get him in your fantasy league first thing Monday morning, trade him in for either Archie Thompson or Paul Ifil who both wore studs to the shin this weekend.

What snuck under the Crossbar and into The Sack?