Roar see red over tackle
Jacob Tratt’s tackle on Saturday night split the opinions of the respective coaches.
The Wellington Phoenix right back slid in on Brisbane Roar left back Corey Brown in the 68th minute of the Roar’s 1-0 win at Westpac Stadium.
Tratt collected Brown high up the leg, with Brown having to be helped from the field and substituted.
Roar coach John Aloisi was unequivocal in his assessment of the tackle.
‘‘For me it’s a red card. When you see Corey Brown’s leg where the studs were, if the studs are that high sliding in from a distance then it’s dangerous play.
‘‘Why I’m saying it’s a red card is because I’m trying to protect our players, and not only our players but opposition players, because if you have tackles like that every week then someone is going to get seriously injured.
‘‘From my point of view, I was very close to it, it was a dangerous tackle and our player had to come off. Hopefully, he’s not too bad, but he shouldn’t be in that situation.’’
The challenge sparked the Roar into life and it was substitute Jamie Maclaren who sealed the win in the 87th minute, capitalising on a mistake from Phoenix captain Andrew Durante at the back to silence the 6449 fans in attendance.
Phoenix co-coach Des Buckingham had a different take on Tratt’s tackle and said it had stopped the momentum they had gained after Michael McGlinchey and Gui Finkler had come on early in the second half.
‘‘With Gui and Mikey coming on we’d got control of the game and then there was an unfortunate stoppage and I hope the player is OK, it was just a mis-timed tackle from Jacob, nothing more, but that’s what took the momentum and the sting out of what had been a promising attack for us.’’
There was more bad news for the Phoenix when Marco Rossi received his fifth yellow card of the season in the second half, which means he will miss his team’s away match to Adelaide United next Sunday.
Buckingham said they had been preparing for a number of weeks for the eventual loss of their influential Italian centre back.
‘‘Dylan Fox we’ve been prepping in the background and Ryan Lowry will play 90 minutes for the reserve against Tasman, so the work has been going on knowing Marco was on four yellow cards and Dura was on three.’’
While they will need a stop-gap at the back, it was again up front that they really struggled.
There had been promising signs in the 3-0 win over Melbourne on Tuesday, but just two of their 11 shots on Saturday hit the target, which Buckingham said wasn’t good enough.
‘‘With the players that we have available to us, it’s been a continuous thing this season, we need to be making sure the chances we are creating we’re taking, but it hasn’t cost us tonight. We were good enough for a draw, it was just unfortunate we lost in the manner we did.’’