Vicious kick mars grand final
Melbourne Victory have snuffed out Newcastle’s A-League fairytale at the final hurdle, defeating the Jets 1-0 to win a record fourth A-League title.
Kosta Barbarouses scored the quickest ever grand-final goal in the ninth minute to seal a controversial season finale underscored by the video assistant referee’s failure to pick up offside Victory players in the process.
And Saturday night’s match in Newcastle ended with a sickening injury-time incident, when Roy O’Donovan was dismissed for ramming his studs into the face of Joe Marston Medallist Lawrence Thomas, who finished the match with his face covered in bandages.
The Jets striker’s high kick collected the Victory goalkeeper flush in the jaw as he came out to collect the ball two minutes from fulltime, and referee Jarred Gillett issued a straight red card with a lengthy ban sure to follow.
It was a horrible end to the first grand final of any major code to be played in a regional town.
Victory coach Kevin Muscat said ‘‘it was just lucky someone didn’t get really badly hurt’’ although Jets captain Nigel Boogaard defended his teammate.
‘‘To be honest with you, from where I was – and I was right behind it – the ball’s in the air, he’s sticking a foot at it,’’ Boogaard said.
‘‘It’s a grand final, there’s five minutes to go, and Lawrence Thomas has come out and been brave.
‘‘To be honest I would have stuck a foot at it.
‘‘All those players in the opposition team, if they were 1-0 down would have thrown themselves at the ball as well.
‘‘Yeah, it looked ugly but I guarantee you Roy had eyes on the ball.’’
O’Donovan could cop a lengthy ban considering his disciplinary record.
It’s his second sending-off this season after he was handed a twomatch ban in March for his ‘‘assault’’ on Sydney FC defender Jordy Buijs when he struck the Dutchman in the face when his hand.
In January 2016 he was hit with an eight-week suspension for a headbutt on Wellington Phoenix’s Manny Muscat.
Newcastle Jets coach Merrick, the Phoenix coach at the time, described the incident as ‘‘going back to the dark ages’’.
For the rest of the game on Saturday, the Jets rode the wave of support from the 29,410 crammed into McDonald Jones Stadium in their bid to become the first Australian side in any sporting code to go from wooden spooners to champions in one season.
In the end, it was Merrick’s one-time protege turned combatant Kevin Muscat who got the last laugh in a contest that started breathlessly but was shut down by Victory’s experienced cam- paigners.
While the Jets dominated all the first-half statistics they couldn’t overcome the allpowerful Thomas, whose gargantuan saves inspired his side to exorcise the ghosts of last season’s grand-final penaltyshootout loss to Sydney FC.
They went behind early when Leroy George’s swooping free kick found the head of James Donachie, who knocked it down for Barbarouses to fire past Glen Moss via a deflection off Johnny Koutroumbis.
Replays showed that Donachie – and two team-mates – had been offside.