PS4 NPL Capital Football Round 10 Review

Tigers FC, Belconnen United and Canberra Olympic claim wins as deluge like conditions ravage Canberra over the weekend.

Saturday 4th June
Woden-Weston FC 2 (Matthew Waters 32’, Bensah Afiabo 40’) Tigers FC 3 (Goran Josifovski 6’, Stephen Domenici 19’, 65’)
(Woden Park)

Tigers FC continued their march towards reclaiming the PS4 NPL League Championship they won in 2014 as they fought off a fierce challenge from Woden-Weston FC at Woden Park on Saturday afternoon in atrocious conditions.

Woden-Weston, who are rooted to the bottom of the competition ladder, certainly didn’t play like a team with only one win to their name all season as they hustled and harried their high-flying opponents and came within a whisker of gaining a reward.

The Wanderers had to come from 2-0 down after twenty minutes to get back into the match as the Tigers appeared to have set off on another routine win after Goran Josifovski has given them the lead in only the sixth minute. And that was doubled before the twenty minute mark as Stephen Domenici bagged his twelfth goal of the campaign. With a two-goal cushion, all appeared rosy for Gaby Wilk and his team.

 

Sunday 5th June
Gungahlin United 0 Canberra Olympic 2 (Philippe Bernabo-Madrid 17’ (pen), Tom McLachlan 75’)
(Gungahlin Enclosed)

Canberra Olympic kept track of Tigers FC at the top of the PS4 NPL ladder with a routine 2-0 win over Gungahlin United. A first half penalty from Philippe Bernabo-Madrid, added to by a goal from Tom McLachlan in the second stanza, ensured that Olympic kept pace with the Tigers who had won at Woden-Weston FC the day before. 

With Gungahlin Enclosed being passed unfit for play the match was, on short notice, switched to the synthetic fields at Nicholls Enclosed. With neither team being particularly inclined to play on the artificial turf during the course of the season, coupled with the driving rain that refused to relent for the majority of the ninety minutes, meant that the match failed to hit any spectacular heights.

This was despite the best efforts of both teams, who tried to play football in difficult conditions that made life for the few spectators who braved the monsoon quite appalling. It was likely that a moment of magic, or maybe a defensive error, would be the main talking point and Olympic benefitted in the seventeenth minute when the tricky Pat Ross-Magee was adjudged to have been fouled inside the area and the visitors were awarded a penalty.

 

CU Academy 4 (Sam Whithear 5’, Josh Gulevski 40’, 66’, Bul Juach 88’) Belconnen United 6 (Dustin Wells 7’, 45’ (pen), Aisosa Ihegie 18’, 25’, 54’, Jason Ugrinic 57’)
(Hawker Football Centre)

By William Bremner

Belconnen United warmed up for their Westfield FFA Cup Semi-Final against CanberrA Olympic with a high scoring win over CU Academy at Hawker Football Centre on Sunday.

The 6-4 victory kept the Blue Devils in touch with their top of the table rivals but Coach Dean Ugrinic would not have been overly pleased with the lack of application in conceding four. 

In fact the home team got off to a flyer when in the fifth minute a cheap turn over presented Sam Whithear with a simple tap in from close range. In keeping with the rest of the game the Blue Devils were back on level terms within two minutes. A free kick awarded on the edge of the CU box was taken quickly by Dustin Wells and his placed effort found the empty side of Sam Brown’s goal. 

 

CLICK HERE for a full report from all of the matches from Round 10.