JTM's blog

Anyone who’s watched a reasonable amount of football will know that sometimes the best team doesn’t always win.

That’s not to say Brisbane deserved to lose, but a draw would have been a fair result.

Of course the brutal truth is that Brisbane took their chances and Adelaide didn’t, and that was largely due to Griffin McMaster’s stellar performance between the posts.

One save from Cristiano, a second half penalty save from Owusu, and another parry to deny Dodd a goal (in one of his best games of the season) almost single-handedly denied United three points.

But it was a case of the same old for Adelaide as numerous entries into the penalty area resulted in precisely nothing.

Aside from the missed penalty, and Cristiano’s gilt edge chance inside the first half hou,r Dodd blew two chances from inside the six yard box, the ever-improving Sarkies volleyed wide, and Cornthwaite and Owusus both saw their bouncing headers fail to find the target.

Brisbane certainly got a very dubious penalty, but van Dijk was clinical in scoring his second and then there was the goal that wasn’t.

How everyone saw the ball cross the line except for one person, the assistant ref on the grandstand side, can only be explained by assuming he was caught out of position

Midway between the penalty box and the half-way line the non-decision was a stroke of luck for Adelaide, but nicely counterbalanced the dodgy pen in the opening stanza.

So where to now for the Reds?

You can only assume the players are hurting, although there are no obvious outpourings of anger and frustration

They can’t aim to resurrect their season for two weeks because of the international break, so must sit and brood on an opening half of the season that has brought just four wins and four draws from 14 games.

Maybe we need to see some red raw passion, instead of the controlled media message that we consistently get.

Maybe we need to a bit of a blow-up to show how much the player’s are hurting.

It’s a point to debate about just why Cassio only got 15 minutes off the bench when Adelaide had been two-nil down since six minutes into the second half.

Vidmar said at the post match press conference that he was wracking his brains trying to figure out a way to change things around, but ultimately he only gave Owusu 25 minutes and Cassio the final quarter of an hour.

It’s a game of opinions but why didn’t he at least bring Cassio or Pantelis on when van Dijk scored his second?

Why too, didn’t one of those two start the game?

The decision not to meant Adelaide looked unbalanced and Jamieson had little protection.

Brisbane exploited this in the first half and it was Jamieson who was (harshly judged) to be responsible for the penalty as he scrambled back on his unprotected left side to quell the threat of Reinaldo.

Maybe if he had some more support he may have judged the situation a little better, although the foul was obstruction at best and would have only been an indirect free-kick.

But that’s an “if”, and there’s also a “could’ve” and a “maybe” in there somewhere too, none of which means anything of course except that as a result of losing Adelaide is in danger of falling to ninth place by the end of the round.

If that does happen, when hostilities resume on the 20^th, Adelaide can almost literally go one way from here and that’s up.

The break will hopefully allow Reid to get closer to full fitness, and they might need his services because the next team in town on the 20^th is the Gold Coast.

With a top six the season is hardly on the line, but United only has six more home games and with three  wins in front of the Hindmarsh faithful another defeat just can’t tolerated.