{"id":6733,"date":"2012-02-13T20:02:06","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T10:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6733"},"modified":"2012-02-13T20:07:23","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T10:07:23","slug":"a-league-201112-round-21-momentum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6733","title":{"rendered":"A-League 2011\/12 – Round 21 – Momentum"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Brisbane Roar travelled to Wellington on Sunday for a battle between second and third.\u00a0 The Phoenix shot to second place in the table after a club-record run of form where they won three away games on the trot.\u00a0 As with the previous two encounters between these sides, Ricky Herbet opted to sit very deep in defence and play on the counter.\u00a0 It worked twice already this season.\u00a0 In Round 6 the Nix drew 1-1 with the Roar at Suncorp despite the Roar having a million chances which they couldn’t put away.\u00a0 The same strategy then yielded a win for the Phoenix when they beat the Roar 2-0 in Dunedin.\u00a0 That was when they were without Thomas Broich and still thought Matt Jurman was an acceptable defender for a professional football team.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to Round 21 and the Roar had over 70% of the possession after half an hour of play.\u00a0 A beautifully lofted ball from Erik Paartalu found Besart Berisha who fired home his 13th goal of the season.\u00a0 The Phoenix rallied in the second half with a more positive approach to the game but Paul Ifill was unable to beat Michael Theoklitos when he had a pair of golden opportunities.\u00a0 Mitch Nichols killed the game dead for the visitors when he scored in the 80th minute.\u00a0 It seems the Roar are rediscovering their form and peaking at just the right time.\u00a0 It was a weekend of perfect results for the Roar – every other team in the top five lost.\u00a0 Could they possibly catch the Mariners?\u00a0 For a chance at catching their rivals, they will need them to lose a third game in a row.\u00a0 Next week the Central Coast Mariners are at home to Wellington.<\/p>\n

WELLINGTON PHOENIX 0 – BRISBANE ROAR 2<\/strong><\/h2>\n

NEWCASTLE JETS 3 MELBOURNE HEART 0<\/strong><\/p>\n

MELBOURNE VICTORY 2 CENTRAL COAST MARINERS 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

SYDNEY FC 2 PERTH GLORY 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

ADELAIDE UNITED 2 GOLD COAST UNITED 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Gold Coast are on track to being labelled the worst sporting region in Australia.\u00a0 If Gold Coast United finish bottom of the A-League table (they are eight points behind 9th), then the city will hold the dubious honour of finishing bottom in the AFL (Gold Coast Suns), the NRL (Gold Coast Titans) and the A-League all in the same season.\u00a0 Awful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brisbane Roar travelled to Wellington on Sunday for a battle between second and third.\u00a0 The Phoenix shot to second place in the table after a club-record run of form where they won three away games on the trot.\u00a0 As with the previous two encounters between these sides, Ricky Herbet opted to sit very deep in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[218,342],"class_list":["post-6733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-a-league","tag-brisbane-roar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6733"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6737,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6733\/revisions\/6737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}