SURF RIDES WAVE
SURF Coast continued its devastating early-season form, recording its fourth win in as many matches with a 4-0 demolition of Bell Park in the State League 4 local derby in Torquay on Saturday.
Played in ideal conditions at Banyul Warri Reserve, the home side took the lead midway through the opening half of the highly anticipated Round 4 showdown after a drama-filled penalty conversion by Matt Linney.
After Surf Coast’s Mylton Bailey was felled in the box by Bell Park ’keeper Tiago Bonifacio in the 19th minute, the All Whites’ custodian was shown a straight red card by referee Joshua Krasic.
His replacement Michael Lesic came on to watch Linney sky his penalty attempt over the crossbar, only to be called back for a retake after a Bell Park player prematurely encroached into the 16-yard box.
Linney, who had scored in each of the three opening rounds, maintained his goal-agame average with a successfully converted retake.
One-nil up at the break, the Coasters came out firing in the second half, with 16-year-old wunderkind Bailey taking over as the star of the show.
The talented teen completed an extraordinary hat-trick in the space of just 14 minutes to secure his third hat-trick of the season and take his astonishing goal tally to 10 goals from just four games.
His first goal came just after the interval in the 47th minute, his second was recorded just seven minutes later before giving the Coasters an unassailable 4-0 lead after 61 minutes.
Following the one-sided duel, Surf Coast assistant coach Rob Casha was understandably a happy man.
“I am extremely happy for the boys, as they have worked really hard on the training track and they deserve to be where they are,” he said. “But it’s still only Round 4 and very early in the season. We need to keep ourselves grounded as there are potential banana skins around every corner.”
Bell Park coach Mick Svaljek was dignified in defeat.
“We were always going to be up against it once we went down to 10 men. We did create some goal-scoring opportunities but in the end we just couldn’t convert them,” he said.
“Credit to Surf Coast for capitalising on the situation and creating space and continuously creating the spare man to overload us — especially across the middle and in our defensive third,” said Svaljek.
The league will take a one break over Easter and resumes in a fortnight when Bell Park hosts third-placed Truganina Hornets, while Surf Coast travels to seventh-placed North Melbourne Athletic.