Spirit 0, Dn Tech 6; Apr 26th
Dunedin Technical showed why it’s favoured to take out the Soccersouth premier league title when it convincingly defeated Spirit FC 6-nil at Invercargill’s Rugby Park on Saturday.
The star studded Dunedin unit with its array of current and former New Zealand Football Championship players controlled the game from the outset with long periods of possession and scored goals at regular intervals.
Technical shares top position on the points table with Roslyn, Caversham and Green Island but has played a game less.
Its tally of 25 goals for and none against is the key indicator that even at this early stage it’s on track to claim the title and to be one of the two teams to go forward to the South Island play-offs against Mainland (Canterbury region) opposition.
Spirit’s goalkeeping crisis hit home on Saturday when its coach Ken Cresswell was forced to wear the keeper’s jersey in a game that in reality called for a specialist in the position.
However Cresswell
showed his versatility with a competent performance that included two brave
saves at the feet of marauding Tech strikers and a finger tip save to deflect a
stinging shot over the crossbar.
But for his valiant effort the score line would have been more embarrassing for Spirit.
John Lang opened
the scoring for Technical at the 7 minute mark when he powered home a header
from a corner kick to give his team a 1-nil advantage.
Led by a dominant performance from Otago United’s player of the year John Chisholm the visitors gave Spirit little room to develop attacking moves and goals from Andy Coburn and Riki Chidley in the thirtieth and thirty seventh minutes gave them (Tech) a 3-nil lead at the half-time break.
Three minutes into the second half Tech’s ace striker Aaron Burgess grabbed his only goal of the day to strengthen the lead at 4-nil. The goal increased his tally to 10 from three games.
Burgess then showed a touch of sublime skill 3 minutes later when he controlled an awkward ball and delivered a pin-point pass to team mate Ross Mackenzie who volleyed home the goal of the day and extend the lead to 5-nil.
The Tech coaches began to make substitutions at this stage and Spirit was allowed its best period of play. It responded with some constructive moves that showed it will be competitive against teams of a lesser quality than Saturday’s opponent.
Restricting Tech to just one more goal can perhaps be seen as success in a game they were never going to win.
Apart from Cresswell’s effort defender Adam Letts and mid fielder Barry Gardiner had strong games for the home team.
Letts was
unfortunate enough though to turn the ball into his own net with almost the last
kick of the game to complete the 6-nil scoreline in Tech’s favour.
