R10 V Central Coast Mariners | Sat 13th Dec | 5pm | Eden Park | Faltering Fullback

3 guys in West Ham shirts and one Tottenham guy in a crowd of over 11k. overblown bollocks

I feel Boyd would have filled his boots. Just a hunch.

Firstly- it's a lot of respect to Ernie and the boys that CC came to disrupt our game rather than play theirs.

Second- we had Bonevacia, Krishna, Burns, Rodriguez all fail to make hay from good positions. That has to be unusual. I don't think we need the mythical striker. We just needed Boyd on the bench. We had 4 of our goal scorers have an off day at the same time. We needed one guy to have his shooting boots on. Or for Burns to square in back for Rodriguez.

Good news is A-Rod is starting to show his skills. It's hard to know if we actually have too many play makers now! McG, A-Rod and Roly...

I don't know what comparable stats would be with other teams but my impression this season is that this is quite usual for us.  We are making many scoring opportunities in a lot of games so far but our conversion rate seems to be very low.

The issue is that these people were concentrated in the Zone. I didn't get the West Ham thing either. Perhaps they should have been in the Away stand if they were hoping for the Salties to take revenge on us.

J'ville. Wellington's Gosford in one!

Compare to last game. Mcglinchey had an off game. Burns and Krishna were on song. Here no one was firing.

Edit: and there was no one with the recently proven ability to score from this formation on the bench for us.

I thought the team played really well. Some of the better football I've seen the nix play.

Of course that means nothing if you don't finish the chances and your goalkeeper gifts them a goal. 

I was impressed with out attack during the first half, just didn't finish. Roly had the best chances, fluffed badly

Great to see Krishna playing so well, he makes very good runs, and it seems his teammates are reading them, he will only get better I think over the season, was the best player on the park. Lovely finish for his goal.

Very good games from Riera, Dura, Siggy

On another day we will get some more of the chances in, so I am not too worried, think Ernie has us playing a good style that works to our strengths

Here are some stats from the rounds to date

What was with the yf zone being behind the goal. It looked like a group of away supporters (in fact they were, I know), and could hardly be heard and did nothing for the atmosphere in the main stand. So we had to revert to a few rugby type Phoenix chants as our support.

Wrong decision to go there I reckon

Patrick said that last season they got told to sit down so decided to move behind a goal where they could stand up.

the zone in Akld is away from the main crowd as every single time up there previously it has gone pear shaped with non-fever folk being in the zone. 

And this time we had those stupid troublemakers in EPL shirts.

So hard being huge fan ,,,,other people ,.....yuck !

Smeltz had a poor conversion rate when he started out. And I think Boyd's style is better suited to Ernie's Not A Striker policy of wing play and cut backs in the box than it was to Ricki's. He combined well with Huysegems last season and I genuinely thought this would be something of a break out season for him. Disappointed that it seems to have been curtailled by contract stuff. Or alternatively- brilliant coaching by Merrick so that he's mega hungry to make a point when Burns is out with Socceroo duty.

Jets are doing well to have 2 teams in the league. We dont even have one!

So the next time you are playing WaiBoP at Kiwitea St and some dudes in Bling and WSW shirts start kicking off, you'd find that not strange?

Well, to be fair, I'd start kicking off if I saw someone in a Bling shirt. On general principle.

Rojas coming back might help :)

You can't have the zone in the main stand. You always have the problem of people wanting to sit down. Yes I know it sounds better there but its just not a option

Awful crowd last night guys. I would be very keen to see the games in Wellington only. Maybe share a game or two in Dunedin (when the students are there) but Auckland is not a football city. At least in Dunedin, fans from Chch and the rest of the south island will attend. 

11k is really shocking, Auckland.

The guy in the brown shirt that was throwing the stuff got rightly told where to go. It started with bottle tops, progressed to chips and then the bottle. Dickhead.

This was a game between the Nix and the Mariners.

I had a quite enjoyable day out.  There were highs, there were lows, there were shambles, there were awkward encounters.  There was also a game.  A game we should have owned, so many goal scoring opportunities.

But I had fun.

There was another guy who was wearing a white top that seemed to be by himself to

Wow just saw on the news that Britomart train station was shut down last night at about 11pm due to rioting/a brawl between 70 odd "youths" some of whom had been at Christmas in the Park and Ragmuffin. Train services stopped for 20 minutes. We went through earlier (about 9pm and went to Foxes) and I left there about midnight and caught ferry home to Devonport and was none the wiser...

bloody Xmas hooligans.

Yeah i saw that. Youths being dick heads. To much wanna be gangsta's, 

amazing.

Just read "no arrests were made" - how?! 

Saw a video and security were just sort of standing there (fair enough, they don't get paid enough for that sh*t). Should've got riot police in and arrested them all! 

Thought he was in the UK in the 70s and 80 and trying to punch on. Should deport fudge wits like that 'home'

Cunningham and Brockie look like a complete waste of space as subs in this team

Strangest part is that he seemed disgusted that we were chanting about Liam Reddy and his alcohol, yet he thought it was okay to call the players "fucking queers" when they made mistakes.

How did the police not attend? Did no one pick up the phone? Did the police say it's your problem? Or were there no police available on Saturday?

Also the crowd figures should take into account Christmas in the Park and Ragamuffin on the same day. It's like management looked at the 20K and 18K crowd figures and went ha! well can you do that with two major festivals on....

But you have to remember that Auckland has over a million people living there, to ask for 18k in attendance - once a year wasn't much to ask for. Eden park is too expensive as well. the only time that white elephant is packed is when the All Blacks play or the 9's..so you gotta ask the question if they should of played at north harbour - the so called home of Football. 

We enjoyed our first trip for a Phoenix game out of Wellington. Shame we didn't win but it was a good game and at least we got the goal and didn't lose. Was in section 410 so when they announced the winner for the lounge bar and said the section I thought "surely not?" but alas we were 5 rows behind. Atmosphere was decent where we were and had to laugh at the guy behind us who kept saying "oh yes" as if it was extremely pleasurable whenever the Phoenix made a good pass or tackle.

Transport was easy. Borrowed a car from my partner's parents and we parked in Downtown and got the train from Britomart in plenty of time. Got chatting to a nice couple who were wearing Phoenix gear on the train. Said they had come over from Australia to see their son and it turned out they were Manny Muscat's parents so that was interesting. Didn't see any trouble aside from a couple of idiots being pulled apart by security outside the ground after the game. We were out of Britomart long before any of the fighting.

I'm sure the Police were too busy dealing with the potential threat of thousands of football hooligans - after all they watch the news as well.

Oh and almost forgot to mention, there's a guy somewhere out there who doesn't come on here but he attended the game. I met him at one of the bus stops on Dominion Rd after the game. He wished me well, a merry christmas and helped identify the bus I needed. I wished him all the best and sincerely hope he and his family have a great christmas. A complete stranger and a good sort. This deserved a mention.

Was a bit disappointed there didn't seem to be a match day programme as I usually like to collect them from anything I go to.

Yes, noticed that as I do collect them.