I don't thin we are parking the bus. True we are not playing as higher possession based game as before but we are not playing hoof ball, we press we pass out of trouble and the defence is still holding a high line. It is good to see in attack we are playing more direct which suits the players we have. But the more direct you play the more risk of turning the ball over , hence the lack of dominant position

Theo needs to be dropped . One shot on target (soft shot straight at him) and it costs as a win , not to mention the other embarrassing moments he consistently comes up with. We probably have the strongest defence in the league at the moment but he is the liability.

Someone needs to call Aloisi out on his bullshit; gone are the days of the great possession football side that revolutionized football in this country to a team that parks the bus, hoofs the ball and relies so heavily on counterattacks. 

Also start Young FFS. 

Would have preferred to see Petratos given a go at striker. I think his skillset is better suited to it.

When will Arana be up to a full game? 

Yeah. With broich on the bench. Maybe a false 9 with borello and oar overlap. Maybe swapping in and out with petrat. I think aloisi is looking for speed on the wings 

Holman playing as striker. Bit unexpected.

@ Bender Parmer

Let's stay off analysis of the crowd, 3k seemed reasonable on the day and I've no reason to believe that Roar would escalate the figure

But you go in to raise some good points, I haven't seen average crowds for the W League but they seem to sit around the 1-2k mark and what Roar have shown these past two years is a properly organised and marketed event can buck the average - Roar took a game to the Gold Coast last season and got something close to 3k and the challenge has to be how do they make 3k the norm and not the exception?

3000 is a massive capacity for a ground. 

I havent been to the City ground for years and as i said, i would love to be wrong. 

Looking at the photos, the ground has 12 terraces in the main stand (it seems that everyone is sitting down, 1 person on each terrace),  If you assume that the stand runs the full length of the field (it stops a few metres short, i would have thought). As a general rule, you can get 2 people per meter.  This means that at full capacity that stand is 2400.  From the photos it was proabably about 2/3 full at best, with the gaps on the sides.  This leaves about 1600 people sitting in the stand.  There couldnt be 1500 elsewhere at the grounds, could there?  My recollection is that there are small terraces behind one of the ends which is near the canteen.  Was this packed? There never used to be anywhere else to sit, other than to line up one out around the fence.  YOu couldnt expect more than a couple of hundred people extra to have been there, could you?

Saying all this, 2000 is still an absolutely enormous crowd.  To put this into perspective, this is far bigger than any crowd from the National baseball League, back in the day when the baseball first went national in the early 90s and were getting huge newspaper coverage (excluding free tickets).  It is also bigger than the average brisbane bullets basketball crowds (excluding freebies) again back in the day - late 80s/early 90s when they were at the entertainment centre, on free to air tv and getting huge publicity. I would be pretty confident it is bigger than both sports averages now. It is bigger than the average/or even best sheffield shield crowds.  (How many does test cricket get nowadays?) It is also bigger than the average Speedway/Motor sport events, though it doesnt compete with their big shows.  

Still, if these crowds are continued, it would technically go close to making Womens soccer potentially close to the second or third most popular spectator sport (behind A league) in the summer, i would have thought. An awesome effort.

@ bender Palma

I agree the capacity isn't 10k, a bit of wishful thinking maybe from BCFC or maybe a hangover from the past?

In terms of there being 3,105 there - I was there and easily there was, easily. I don't know what you see in the photographs that makes you say that (or why you think anyone would go to the trouble of inflating attendance?) but we went expecting a smallish crowd (Roar normally get 500-2,500 for the w-league) and did a bit of manual counting to try and work out how many were there so 3k does not surprise

Brisbane City doesnt seat close to 10,000. In ffact, unless they have done something on the bike track side and behind the goals (which logistically hasnt happened), i would be surprised if the capacity is as high as 3000. Maybe using the sardine tactic, but that isnt realistically possible nowadays.

I hate to say it, but looking at those photos, there is no way in the world that there was 3000 people there.

@ Mr. B

I always like kaluderovic, he always seemed to score :)

I think he just got unlucky, Aloisi had to make a quick decision on whether to keep him or let him go when he first arrived and he went for the latter. I was always surprised another HAL club didn't pick him up

Brisbane Strikers NOW

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@ Mr. B

Enough now. Get yourself a membership - at least a 3 game pack

@ crimsoncrusoe

Roar always promote their W League games and there was nothing unusual on this one. There is no dedicated membership but club membership includes access to all three team home games (HAL, WL and NYL/NPL)

W league games here are generally well attended, typically 1500-3000 but why this one started off so high is debatable. Maybe the extra marketing from Cahill helped? Personally I didn't really want to go to two games in less than 24 hours and thought that would have kept numbers low but obviously not. It is the only game at this venue this season which is popular locally so that may have helped?

I didn't renew mine this year, but I always thought the W-League games were part of the Roar membership.

Waz,I got the 10k from a google search.That seems a little high based on the photos.
The big question is why there was a crowd of 3k? Was it promotion?It surely has to be a big factor.The weather?Probably not,because summer normally has good weather and yesterday was too hot ,if anything.
Do W-League teams have any form of memberships?

@ crimsoncrusoe

Agreed. There's plenty of options, even if a team just take a handful of games away - give it a theme and make an event of it.

I'm not sure BCFC's Spencer Park has a capacity of 10k mind you but around the nation there has to be some decent stadiums that may need temporary seating erected but could work

Not far behind Wellingtons figure of 5,832. 

More than what the NPL teams get including ex NSL clubs lol

Here are some photos from the game

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I see they played at Brisbane City's home ground in Newmarket,not far from Ballymore..But i didn't realise they had a decent stand and a capacity of 10k.It makes you winder what is possible ,when WP amd CCM struggle to get 10k to a ground and must lose money with stadium costs and here is a decent suburban ground,where clubs playing can make a modest profit.

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Great news on both counts!

Roar opened up their W League campaign at home to Sydney this arvo winning 2-1. And did so in front of a W League standalone record crowd of 3,105

Great news forumites. Thanks for posting your news and views.

Yeah you could tell both Arana and Dimi were lacking match fitness as they were completely gassed when they came on. I don't think either of them will be ready to start next week with Jamie unavailable. Bring in Borrello to start up front and keep the rest of the team the same.