Wellington Phoenix 2-1 (Kevin Muscat's) Melbourne Victory

That was so good. The best I have seen the Phoenix play, after a somewhat rum opening 20, when I was surprised we were still in it (we scored with our first attack!). Same formation as Sunday with the excellent, but less strong in the air Durante replacing the suspended Dodd.
Manny Muscat lived up to his pre-season promise, Lochhead was effective and dangerous, Durante was excellent and Sigmund continues to be our best all-round defender, despite looking like a short, podgy marine.
Ferrante was irrelevant (an improvement), Fred lightweight, Brown muscular (and scoring a top goal) and McKain magnificent - the difference between the teams for my money.
Bertos was okay, with some wonderful moments and Smeltz was Smeltz. Battered to pieces, strong as an ox, and scorer of a goal that was, frankly, Collymore-esque. There is no higher praise.

It just felt marvellous.

And I forgot to mention the superb work by keeper Paston. I get many, many things wrong about football( although I am not yet wrong about Ferrante) but I feel vindicated about this one. Paston isn't a shot-stopper to the standard of Moss, but gives such confidence to the ack four that even the varied line-ups of this season have seemed stronger in front of him. And the saves he made last night were actually rather classy. And when the ball was there to be held, he held it, rather than spilling it across the box.

I called this match as a 0-4 before the game, expecting Allsopp to continue his rampage and Archie Thompson to thrive. Happily wrong.

Phoenix 2-0 Newcastle Jets

Closer than it should have been. The Jets' keeper was good, but should still have been made to worker harder by a Phoenix team with an advantage of one man, at first, and then two men later on. I missed the first incident and was getting all self-righteously worked up about the ref blowing up for what looked a good tackle by Dodd. But there is no doubt it was a good decision. The second sending-off was just as clear: a horrible attempt at assault that, thankfully, the Phoenix player saw coming and evaded.
Not too much of a contest after that. The Phoenix were relatively patient, but of limited creativity: Fred looked rusty and a bit out of alignment with his team-mates, but the talent is clearly there in abundance. Daniel came off the bench and stayed relatively central. And (this hurts) Ferrante was impressive given time and space. His nous was welcome when panic could have set in. Smeltz scored a cracker of a goal in an otherwise relatively quiet game for him. But Bertos, unfamiliar in a central role, and Hearfield, off the bench, were excellent. Direct, aggressive and (in Hearfield's case) good shooting.
I should write more, if only to comment on the box in which I was happily residing, but work beckons.