FC vs Mariners

Being a Cove season ticket holder I am quite proud to say I have been to every home game this season. I am however not proud to admit that I have not yet experienced an away trip. With Gosford only being an extra hour or so north of Sydney it is very accessible but different work aspects have come together to conspire against me!

I have recently got a Christmas job during my uni end of session break doing nightfill at Toys R Us and this job has restricted my traveling on both Gosford away trips. The first one was I wasn’t getting enough shifts and had a grand total of $22 in my bank account. Now Christmas is fast approaching I have become a slave, working 5 nights a week doing 8 or 9 hour shifts sometimes to 4am! What makes it even better is thanks to good ol’ Johnny Howard, I get a flat $11.70 an hour with no penalty rates whatsoever! At least I had enough money to go to Gosford on Sunday but just no time thanks to an insane amount of shifts! I can’t win!

I did get to catch a replay today without knowing the result so it was close to watching it live… I thought that a 0-0 stalemate was pretty much the expected result. Although both teams had chances such as Corica’s open header and Mrdja’s thunderbolt of a free kick that cannoned into the post, both teams were very set and solid in defense. With both teams on winning streaks and with Adelaide losing to Melbourne, no team was going to move up or down the ladder with a win or a loss.

What I am more interested in talking about is the relationship and fun that the supporter groups of both teams, “The Marinators” and “The Cove” share when games are played. I was left just shaking my head once again at anti football journalism written in the Central Coast Express Advocate here. Come on… Riot Police… The “firm” in question, the Central Coast Stadium Elite, are a bunch of 15 year old keyboard warriors with a totally riot police worthy MySpace account and a forum name!

As a Rugby League fan from my childhood I was always afraid of “soccer hooligans”. I eventually ended up going to Northern Spirit matches and now onto Sydney FC where the crowd is fun and the total opposite to the stereotype that is out there about the kind of people that football fans are. When will these journalists such as Noone of the Advocate and Fitzy of the Herald attend a game and buck their stereotypes and crazy bias against football that we are all so sick of reading. The Football Tragic has some good pieces on this issue that I recommend you read here.

As expected there were no ‘riots’ or ‘firm battles’ between the so called fierce rival supporter groups, just fun banter and singing which is one of the main attributes that attracts me to football rather than another code.

DANE