Three hat-tricks 'right time at right place'
BY rights, Cody Brook should have had three new footballs in his possession.
Unfortunately, he is wearing the blue strip of Mosgiel, not the blue strip of Chelsea.
Brook (23) has been on fire in the Mosgiel frontline.
In the past three games, he has scored three hattricks.
It started with three goals in the side’s 70 win over Wanaka.
He then slammed in eight goals as the Mosgiel side ran riot against a weakened Northern outfit.
Brook scored his eighth and final goal in the dying minutes of the game and, with it, set a Southern Premier league record for the most goals in a game by one player.
He kept up the scoring by hitting another hattrick in his side’s 52 win over University at Memorial Park on Saturday.
So 14 goals in the past three games is not a bad return for the Southern United forward.
Like every good team man, Brook simply said he was making the most of the opportunities created by those around him.
‘‘I have moved out on to the right wing and I am leftfooted so it is suiting me. I’m just turning up at the right time and the right place,’’ he said.
‘‘We’ve got a lot of ball players in our team and they are very good at putting the ball through.’’
He praised players such as Rohan Ali and Aidan BarbourRyan for creating those opportunities.
He did not know the season record for goals scored in the league and feared with the season having started late he might come up short in his attempt to break it.
After one full round, the top four teams will go into a separate section and play two rounds against each other.
He was keen for Mosgiel, the defending champion, to make the top section. Brook had suffered from knee injuries in the past but he was feeling all right at the moment.
In bigtime football, it is something of a tradition that the player who gets a hattrick gets to keep the match ball.
But this is amateur football in Dunedin and all Brook has got is a pat on the back for his efforts.
‘‘Yeah, it would be good to get those balls but that doesn’t seem to be happening.’’