Going by last season, it seems Glory doesn't kick of their 'Membership Campaign' till later, like well into August??!

Oh, oh, spaghettioes, 4th Para...............

South African test for the Glory

I think they need a good striker, because Smeltz looks like having another shit season with no pre-season.

"We've got a few of the more experienced players still recovering from off-season surgery and little niggly injuries, so the younger lads have a really good opportunity here to get some first team experience under their belts.

"Jacob Burns, Steve Pantelidis and Danny Vukovic won't play on Thursday, so we'll have a very youthful team out there and that's great because the more experience they can get before the start of the A-League season, the better it's going to be for everyone."

"We won't be experimenting in terms of formation, but we'll be starting Jamie Maclaren up front and several of the other younger guys will get a chance to start with the likes of Burns, (Shane)Smeltz and Pantelidis out.

Glory's Tour Squad: Jacob Burns, Jack Clisby, Matthew Davies, Jack Duncan, Cameron Edwards, Ryan Edwards, Dean Evans, Chris Harold, Scott Jamieson, Ndumba Makeche, Steven McGarry, Ryo Nagai, Brandon O'Neill, Steve Pantelidis, Harry O'Brien, Blamo QuaQua, Sidnei, Jamie Maclaren, Josh Risdon, Danny Vukovic, Riley Woodcock, Adrian Zahra

Perth Glory was edged out 1-0 by Mpumalanga Black Aces in the first game of its South Africa tour on Thursday (Friday morning AEST), but coach Alistair Edwards took plenty of positives from his side's performance at Mbombela Stadium.

Glory looked the brighter of the two sides for much of the first-half, with Ryo Nagai and new Brazilian recruit Sidnei regularly troubling the Black Aces' defence.

The Black Aces remained on the back foot during the early exchanges of the second period, but eventually found their rhythm and bagged what proved to be the only goal of the contest on 69 minutes.

Undaunted, Glory continued to create plenty of chances of its own and came agonisingly close to claiming a deserved share of the spoils with five minutes remaining when Chris Harold rattled the cross bar.

"I’m putting the result aside because it's really totally irrelevant at this stage," Edwards said.

"It was a really good performance from the boys against a team that is just about to start its league season.

"We effectively played two different teams in each half so that everyone got at least 45 minutes.

"Jacob Burns didn't play and neither did Steve Pantelidis and with the likes of Shane Smeltz and Michael Thwaite not here, the young boys had to step up and they definitely did that.

"In the second-half, the next oldest player after Danny Vukovic was Dean Evans, who's 21-years-old, so that shows you how youthful the side was.

"Jamie Maclaren and Ryan Edwards did very well in the nine and ten positions and were a real handful for their defenders, while Steven McGarry was excellent as the seasoned campaigner in central midfield.

"Brandon O'Neill also continued his development as a right centre-back and was absolutely fantastic in that role.

"There were a lot of learning moments this afternoon for everyone in the squad," Edwards said.

"The performance was very pleasing and I can see that the team is developing really nicely on and off the park.

"We were expecting a good hit-out from a top-quality South African side and I was pleasantly surprised how we matched them in every department.

"Their coach was previously in charge of the South Africa national side and he was very complimentary about our team and the way we went about things.

"Now I'm looking forward to getting some more training sessions in, building up the capacity of the players to play at that standard for 60 minutes and then developing further from there."

MP Black Aces 1-0 Perth Glory
Mbombela Stadium
Thursday 25th July 2013

Glory Line-Up First-Half – Formation 4-2-3-1
Danny Vukovic
Josh Risdon, Brandon O’Neill, Jack Clisby, Scott Jamieson
Cameron Edwards, Steven McGarry
Ryo Nagai, Ryan Edwards, Sidnei
Jamie Maclaren

Glory Line-Up Second-Half – Formation 4-2-3-1
Danny Vukovic
Matthew Davies, Brandon O’Neill, Jack Clisby, Riley Woodcock
Blamo Qua Qua, Dean Evans
Chris Harold, Harry O’Brien, Adrian Zahra
Ndumba Makeche

O'Neill is basically about the same size as Burns. He is a quality player, and has been very solid at cb so far!! I wouldn't mind a cb pairing of Clisby and O'Neill in the years to come, both have very good distribution .

Yeah and Burns was shit when he had to become a CB and "very solid" O'Neill has come against far inferior sides in terms of talent and training physique (BON's had at least 2 years building his fitness up full-time).

If we end up 2 CBs down, I do not want to rely on a converted CB who's had no A-League or equivalent experience there.

RE the squads - that's handy, gives us an idea of where Glory players are shaping up. Interesting to see R.Edwards in the AM position and Zahra on the left.

Just, going by the official website, FB page and Twitter account, compared to others - others have all sorts about their membership drives, all kinds of schemes and publicity about it. Like This, This, Victory Members Portal - Separate site off-shoot from the FFA based one, Similar deal with Wanderers one, a separate site for Memberships like the Victory, Mariners have own Membership page too, with stated goal of 5k there, SFC's Membership section on the FFA website - PACKED full of info/member packs broken down!, Roar have their $1k for every one-thousandth membership sold scheme! A number of clubs have publicly stated member targets too and have been doing so the past few seasons. Jets, SFC and perhaps some others have lil tv ad campaigns about it too.

The examples I give are just one of a good half dozen or more posts each of these clubs have put on their FB timelines, Twitter feeds or articles in the 'news' section of their official, FFA-based, websites. Infact you are rightly HIT with such 'news'/updates' fairly regularly, upon visiting these pages - So any fans or otherwise visiting the page would surely NOT miss such information, well not for long anyway!

I've checked others too and they too have semblance of life, updates related to memberships about this or that. It seems everybody is doing something, on-line that is, except Glory's websites? :s I scoured back and found ONE and that was 'about a' family fun day/member drive at a Gosnells junior club, rather than to rally anybody on-line.


Thanks libertarian, yeah they'd definitely be Friday or possibly Sunday games for me, which narrows it alot I guess.

Edited by GloryPerth: 24/7/2013 12:02:11 PM

after writing my previous message I was thinking about it and I don't think we desperately need a CB.
Wouldn't we be more suited to start blooding a couple of young CB's from the youth team or from Around Australia?

We are going to be building a strong team this season and may not compete for finals/top 3 and that is fine with me and I am sure fine with a lot of true glory fans.

I agree we need a CB but I would prefer to blood say Clisby and O'neill and have them ready and raring to go for the following season, with Risdon and Jamieson either side of them it would be a young deadly defensive unit. With backup coming in the form of Pantelidis/Burns and other youngsters.

Just my thoughts anyway,

A strong second-half showing was not enough to prevent Perth Glory from succumbing to a 2-0 defeat at the hands of University of Pretoria FC in the second game of their South Africa tour.

A major traffic delay severely disrupted the tourists' pre-match preparations and it was therefore unsurprising that they were a little slow out of the blocks.
But after conceding two quick-fire goals, Alistair Edwards' men proceeded to dominate much of the remainder of the contest, creating a host of decent goalscoring opportunities.

University of Pretoria, or Tuks FC as they are more commonly known, were indebted to their goalkeeper who produced a string of outstanding saves to maintain his side's early advantage, the pick of which saw him foil both Jamie Maclaren and Ryan Edwards in one-on-one situations.
Triallist Harry O'Brien also twice went close late in the second-half, leaving Head Coach Edwards generally satisfied with another solid pre-season hit-out.

"It was a very worthwhile exercise," he said.
"We were a little bit sluggish in the first-half, possibly because we had a four-hour bus trip to get the game and had to undertake a massive detour due to a 20-car pile-up on the freeway which didn't help.
"As a consequence of that, the players were a bit lethargic and we were giving the ball away uncharacteristically.
"But we finished the game very strongly and their 'keeper was probably the man-of-the-match.
"Having recovered from that slow start, we were on top for long periods in the second-half and just couldn't get the ball in the back of the net.
"Today was probably a true reflection of where we are in our pre-season and where Tuks are.
"Their season starts next weekend so they are ready to go, whereas we've got until October and we're just trying to get some game time into our players at this stage."

Edwards was also pleased with his charges' level of creativity in the final third and the way they combated a ruggedly physical Tuks side.

"We created more chances today than we did in our first game," he said, "which is a major positive.
"I wouldn't say that Tuks were a better side than our first tour opponents, Black Aces, but they were very, very physical and definitely the most direct team we've played against for some time.
"It was a very niggly game with a few nasty challenges especially when we started to dominate in the second-half and they got a bit frustrated by that."

The feisty clash in the South African capital marked a return to action for Jacob Burns who got 45 minutes under his belt having recovered from a quad strain and the club skipper was one of the players Edwards singled out for special praise.

"Jacob played very well," he said, "Steven McGarry was fantastic again in the first-half, Danny (Vukovic) played well as he always does, Scott Jamieson and Brandon O'Neill were excellent at the back and Jamie Maclaren looked dangerous when he came on and was unlucky not to score a couple."

Steve Pantelidis, meanwhile, is poised to make his first appearance since off-season Achilles surgery in Wednesday's final tour game against SuperSport United and Edwards feels that the entire playing group is very much on track in terms of its pre-season fitness development.

"We're gradually building up the players' game time and today we managed to get at least 60 minutes into most of them against a season-ready side.
"We're also experimenting in the sense that we are giving different players opportunities to play in different roles.
"We did that today with Dean Evans who played at centre-back and did very well there.
"In those respects, the trip is going extremely well."

University of Pretoria 2-0 Perth Glory (Half-time 2-0)
Pretoria
Sunday 28th July 2013

Glory Line-Up – Formation 4-2-3-1

Danny Vukovic, Josh Risdon (Matt Davies 53'), Dean Evans, Jack Clisby (Brandon O'Neill 46'), Scott Jamieson, Steven McGarry (Jacob Burns 46'), Cameron Edwards (Blame QuaQua 53') , Chris Harold (Ryo Nagai 60'), Ryan Edwards (Harry O'Brien 60'), Sidnei (Adrian Zahra 53'), Ndumba Makeche (Jamie Maclaren 60')

Perth Glory's 2013 South Africa tour proudly sponsored by Kaboko Mining, Live2Learn and Europcar

Gareth Morgan

after writing my previous message I was thinking about it and I don't think we desperately need a CB.
Wouldn't we be more suited to start blooding a couple of young CB's from the youth team or from Around Australia?

We are going to be building a strong team this season and may not compete for finals/top 3 and that is fine with me and I am sure fine with a lot of true glory fans.

I agree we need a CB but I would prefer to blood say Clisby and O'neill and have them ready and raring to go for the following season, with Risdon and Jamieson either side of them it would be a young deadly defensive unit. With backup coming in the form of Pantelidis/Burns and other youngsters.

Just my thoughts anyway,

:-k
That's what we're doing and advocating. Clisby has already been blooded from the youth team. I disagree with the notion that filling a hole in defence by converting another player is the way to go.

Just because at youth level someone has covered that role (which is all we know), does not mean if thrusted into that role in the A-League, they are going to be competent there.

Garcia? Is he still an option? I dunno...


As for free kicks Shanagar, I think my thoughts on that subject are as well known as yours :D

Edited by f1dave: 30/7/2013 09:48:54 PM

Garcia is out of the equation.

Free kicks is an interesting one, I was under the impression that Clisby is quite capable of scoring from free kicks?
I don't mind Jambo taking them if he's just putting it into an area.