Waz,who played in the back three each half and who was playing in front of the defence?

When you said back 3 was it more of a 3-5-2 or 3-4-3?

According to the Brisbane Football Review it was a 3412.

Here's the first half side:



And here's the second half side:

To my eye it varied in each half. 

In the first half it was 3-5-2 with two very distinct wingbacks (remember our pages of discussion?) with O’Toole in the left and someone far far away on the right. 

In the second half half there were no wingbacks, the midfielders seemed to interchange a lot so it looked like they had no clear roles with maybe the exception of Pepper who clearly was the screening midfielder. 

the 3-4-1-2 (Roar Review) I think is a stretch - O’Shea played at “10” (or CAM) but he sat very deep so to my eye he was part of a 5 man midfield. 

How did the youngsters look? Any standouts? Anyone you think could play regularly this season? 

Akbari looked really good. Based on that 45 minutes I’m surprised victory let him go. 

Murotovic (spelling?) also looked very good. 

No Gillesphey?

No, and no Bowles either. Whisper at the ground was Bowles was injured 

What about Powell and Courtney-Perkins. 

How was dwh?

Diddnt play , Akbari in his place , he scored .

What was score and who played?

Did Redlands look decent?

Did our young players look
a cut above the Redlands players. ?

Really hard to analyse all that for a variety of reasons but here goes. 

3-0 to the Roar, with two separate teams playing in each half. In the first half it was the first pick defenders and reserve forwards, in the second first pick forwards and reserve defenders. 11 subs were made at halftime. 

Redlands looked fit and organised. Many people expected them to tire in the second half but they didn’t. They had some good players especially their #10 who had pace to burn (but when he got there his crossing and shooting were off the mark - probably why he’s in the NPL). 

A fair scoreline would have been 6-0 but their keeper had a blinder making several outstanding saves, a couple of point blank ones as well. He went off about the 75th minute and we all thought “here comes some goals” only for the reserve keeper to pull off some good saves too. 

Akbari and O’Toole looked a cut above to be fair, so too Moratovic but Redlands didn’t have a lot of the ball so hard to say, they defended well and competed hard in midfield - they weren’t afraid to give Roar players a kicking (although the game was played in good spirits). 

The full game (amateur) stream is here:

https://m.facebook.com/roarsupporters/?tsid=0.11923105526584277&source=result

and the club were videoing the game so the goals should be out soon. 

So the locals looked better than the Brits lol.

My fears for the season have just escalated again.

Holloway, Aldred and O’Shea all looked really good - they’re going to leave s few people with egg on faces this year. 

Only ROD has an off game but he should come good. 

I think it’s far to early to make that claim, especially as Redlands are battling relegation in one of the weaker NPL’s. Imo friendlies aren’t a good indicator of how a player or team will go.

They are so many examples of teams or players doing really well in pre-season and then flopping during the season proper. Ilso and Matmour are examples.

Some other examples would include the time Dan Heffernan scored a hat-trick against WSW, the time Matt Sim came off the bench and scored 4 goals in a cup game and there are so many more I could post.

That’s a bit rich considering the number of people that have written these guys off based off Wikipedia profiles though? 

But I didn’t write them off based off their Wikipedia profiles.

My opinions are based on their transfermarkt profiles as well as opinions of fans from the player’s previous clubs.

I wasn’t specifically referring to you, or anyone else on this board. just making the point it can’t be too early to be positive if it’s not too early to be negative. 

On both counts its always a case of “wait and see”. 

The first fear of the critics (thatRoar would play British hoof ball) was put to rest yesterday, if anything they didn’t use it enough. But it was short, crisp, passing movements 

The players concerned too took a step towards slaying those fears. Apart from ROD, he just didn’t click yesterday. 

I found it to be very watchable.

As early as it is we showed some very good, fast combination play, and definitely seemed to have some direction to our play.

The imports played solid, and looked like they knew what they were doing when things got tight - although I had some nervous moments when Redlands super fast striker got in behind a few times and we didn't look like we could catch him. We do know that we are going to come up against super fast forwards in the ALeague who can finish, so I would like to see an improvement on either positioning or tactics to limit that sort of opportunity as the team develops since we do not have lightning fast backs in that first half line-up. We did seem to pick up pace in the second string back line, so a combination of experience and speed may be the end result.

Baron Samedi-Holloway was fast, strong, and skillfully dangerous. He looked to be a very strong part of our new core.

We did not run out of ideas, which is a huge step forward. I liked our general choices when we hit a wall going forward - looking to pass back while still moving forward making the defenders decide between following the player continuing their run or putting pressure on the next ball carrier. Also showed a lot more hunger and commitment for the ball in secondary contests.

Roar: Looking on track and good in game 1 against a very well organised, hard working, fast and enthusiastic team from a lower league.

Shame I have no idea who most of our players are yet. Lucky they had numbers on or I'd be even more stuffed.

Nice write up. 

Holloway was a bit of a mystery when he was signed, his strike record not great, and not an awful lot of love from fans of his current club. But I can see why RF has signed him - I can’t remember an individual with his physique and speed in the HAL (maybe Bernie Ibini??) ... if he’s as good as that 45 suggested he will go well this season. 

Lots of positives from the weekend, especially the number of fans who turned out. Thanks to all.

i dont think Ibini had the muscle of Holloway. the man is a beast. 

Thanks for the updates, sounds like a decent result for the second week of training with a largely new squad. interesting that ROD and (O') Aldred were the captains on the day I would guess that Aldred will end up with the arm band full time as you would expect ROD to be under more pressure to maintain his spot with the young forwards.

When you think how horrible pre seasons were under Aloisi, this is an encouraging start.  I recall Aloisi saying pre season doesn't count but it sure as hell does.  Our best and worst seasons have always been reflected in pre season performances.  That was why I was sure we were screwed last season before the season proper even kicked off.

Most encouraging all for me are the accounts of the quick passing game that the team appears to be playing.  The Sydney game will be an interesting test.

All in all this season is shaping up to the most interesting all round for a long time.

Agree with most of what you posted, but in defense of JA, the pre-season results under him were similar (even though the style of play may have been crud).

We wont know too much about our chances until we see performances against HAL clubs.
Even under JA we have performed well against NPL clubs.
But a high energy game ,with lots of short passing aimed at moving forward will at least show that we wont be the lethargic ,dysfunctional mess we were in the last few seasons.

I'm relying on memory purely, so fallible, but my recollection is that the last pre season was poor with a lot of underwhelming performances.   Could be wrong, but it was certainly on the basis of the pre season that I foresaw a poor start to the season proper.

Didn't we beat Sydney in one of the behind closed doors pre-season games under JA? I remember getting my hopes up after that. 
Given the amount of experimentation etc in pre-season games, even results against A-League opposition won't mean much. 
The FFA cup game will be the first reliable indicator of how we compare.