In the week running up to the game in view of the bad weather forecast for the weekend there was a lot of speculation about whether or not we’d be allowed to use the covered grandstand, but once again yet another club was happy to cash in on around 800 travelling supporters without going out of their way to make us feel at home. As usual the traffic concept was a mixture of taped-off areas and no signposting; so those who actually found the way to the ground were not informed they couldn’t park there until they were turned away by the, in Austria ubiquitous, bloke from the voluntary fire brigade. Just for the record, it doesn’t help to acquit yourself by saying, ‘we’ll we did say you should come by train’. If you want to stage football matches then you have to provide parking for the spectators.
As it turned out the town council didn’t want the Austria fans to use the grandstand, but they obviously did want them to pay to stand in the rain and drink beer. One opinion I heard was they simply didn’t want us in their grandstand, although it’s not as if there were any nappa leather seats with underbum heating to destroy. Another dafter explanation was that the grandstand couldn’t be used as it wasn’t an officially certified grandstand, but if that had been the case I would have thought nobody could use it!
Nevertheless, it wasn’t too cold or too unpleasant and at least there was a good view of the pitch. Not content to be treated as second class citizens yet again a section of the Austria fans headed across the pitch to take up one end of the covered stand. After the usual ‘if-you-think-you’re-getting-away-with-that’ announcement; the club officials must’ve realised that it wasn’t worth making a scene and despite threatening not to start the match, they did anyway.
So for the first time I can remember we had the ‘us and us’ echo effect across the pitch and coordinating the chants was a battle against the time lapse factor with everybody half a second behind everybody else. Then there was the ‘us and them’ effect. Our lot gruffly chanting out the standard fayre and in the sound breaks there was that horrible chirpy crowd sound like when 15,000 kids go to watch an under-14 international as all the kids in Puch tried to get the crowd going. Bless ‘em – cheeky little monkeys!
Anyway, after having our points hijacked last week by SAK we were looking to put some more distance between ourselves and the pack with a big win against a Puch team cowering close to the bottom of the table. In the past it was enough to bring a big crow bar to break open the bank, but in this division the good teams try to play football against us, and lose. The weaker ones have got clever and realised if they get 11 men behind the ball, park a bus in front of goal, all they have to do is wait until we go attack-crazy and set off on a counter attack. It doesn’t matter how good you look going forward; once the offside trap has been cracked you look as daft as anyone else.
With Pecaranin out sick and Kluth and Oberhauser in, the defence had an unusual look to it and with Neubauer missing in midfield we’ve lacked the grand design and a significant source of goals for a few weeks now. As soon as the game got underway it was clear how the day was going to pan out as we started out in attacking mood, Urbanek chasing down the wing at every opportunity and it was just a question of whether we would score more than we conceded. Puch had decided to do things the hard way; for us, and there were several barges, pushes, trips and niggles. As expected, the first twenty minutes were dominated by unattractive football in midfield with no real room to develop and lots of borderline challenges. A couple of early shots on the Puch goal were kept out by the goalie, Stefan Katstaller, and although we were spending more time in their half, it wasn’t a practice game like the walk-over in Piesendorf.
On 20 minutes we thought we were in front but apparently the referee hadn’t said the free kick could be taken, so back to 0-0. However, on 23 minutes Bernd Winkler finally broke the deadlock with a classy bit of dancing about before he poked the ball into the corner and get both sides of the echo chamber jumping up and down. Banging on the hoardings I realised that they were cheapo painted ones so I then spent five minutes trying to get this powdery faded white paint off my hands.
On the other side of the pitch there had been no police invasion of the rear end of the stand where some of our fans were standing, so I presume the danger level had been downgraded from ‘national security red alert’, down to ‘you can stay there as long as you don’t set anything on fire’. With the increasing volume of drizzle in the air, combustion would have been an option requiring too much effort and was not seriously considered.
Of course, no Austria game is complete without conceding at least one goal, so just minutes after taking the lead a corner passed over the danger area only to be crossed hard back in to the hands of Alex Trappl, who fluffed it and was than run over by a steam train by the name of Manuel Stockinger to make it 1-1. At first Alex just seemed to be pissed off at dropping the ball but the longer he stayed down, the more it became apparent there had been some sort of injury and after several minutes he was carried off the field to be replaced by Stefan Huber, who quarter of an hour later was also left injured on the edge of the penalty area by yet another overenthusiastic Puch tackle. Fortunately he was able to play on and a few seconds later a fairly rough first half came to a close with just three yellow cards to its name.
Considering the fact that the town authorities had made a point of warning us off their grandstand, in reality it looked to be another example of spineless gamesmanship as if they had really thought Austria Salzburg was such a big danger they would have ordered more police. Maybe I wasn’t looking, but I didn’t see a single policeman plod up and down our side of the pitch the whole game. However, as there was nothing more than bad language aimed at the referee and the Puch players there wasn’t really anything for them to police.
The second half started in the same tone as the first half had ended. A number of the Puch players seemed to be in an ongoing discussion with the ref, not least Stockinger and Rasidovic, and within a few minutes Puch had four yellows for our one (Cavic). And just as we were getting prepared mentally for one of those dour and frustrating dogfights. Heli Rottensteiner did a do-it-yourself job, heading the ball to set himself up and volleying the f**cker into the back of the net for a deserved portion of fan adoration! 2-1, and for a few minutes it looked like the dam might have bust as a number of attacks got to the edge of the penalty area, but Mayer found Kluth in front of an open goal who was somehow not able to convert. Shortly afterwards a Cavic run ended with a shot going out the wrong side of the post.
As the wall seemed to be back up again Winkler picked up a yellow for an impetuous foul. Five minutes later Nico Mayer sort-of rugby tackled a player as he got past. More daft than dangerous but certainly worth a yellow card. Ladies team now! On 69 minutes it could have been 3-1 as Rottensteiner hammered in a corner to the head of Bernd Winkler, only to be stopped on the line. As we were all still in ‘almost celebration’ mode Puch broke away in the other direction and Mirkovic converted a through pass to put the home team level again.
With Schleindl on for Feldinger a few minutes earlier Puch’s right side began to open up and as Puch were now concentrating on destroying any attacking moves and wasting as much time as possible the game got a bit rougher. Kopleder was brought on for Oberhauser. A yellow for Puch’s Rene Wanner on 82 minutes was promptly followed by a deliberate handball by Rasidovic, who had been whingeing at the ref the whole game, so off he went. The logical consequence was a hectic final few minutes as the Austria desperately tried to melt down the Puch reactor. In the 89th minute we were in ecstasy as Peter Urbanek headed us in front! As I was banging away on the metal hoardings I didn’t even realise the ref had disallowed the goal as I didn’t see any sort of infringement. But that sort of fits in with the last few weeks of not-quites and only-justs. The only consolation was that the other barging, whingeing Puch player, Manuel Stockinger, finally got a deserved yellow on 92 minutes.
On balance, although we were the better side, again we weren’t clever enough to break down yet another distinctly average team, who’s only means of staying in the game was to amass in their own half and kill any creative football. I guess we will see a lot more of this from opponents until we learn to change the pace of the game and draw them out of position which takes an equal amount of discipline but a lot less effort.
All the best
Roger Lord
FC Puch - SV Austria Salzburg 2-2 (1-1)
Austria Salzburg played with:
Trappl (30. Huber); Urbanek, Kluth, Milic, Oberhauser (85. Kopleder); Cavic, Federer, Mayer, Feldinger (65. Schleindl), Rottensteiner; Winkler
Goals:
0-1: Winkler (23.)
1-1: Stockinger (27.)
1-2: Rottensteiner (54.)
2-2: Mirkovic (70.)
Shots total: Puch 10 / Austria 14
Shots on goal: Puch 6 / Austria 6
Shots blocked: Puch 1 / Austria 0
Corners: Puch 2 / Austria 4
Fouls: Puch 29 / Austria 24
Offsides: Puch 7 / Austria 4
Gelbe Karten:
Puch: 6 (Essl, 19./foul; Rasidovic, 35./criticism; Pucher, 47./foul; Saller, 53./foul; Wanner, 82./foul; Stockinger, 92./foul)
Austria: 4 (Cavic, 43./foul; Winkler, 62./foul; Mayer, 67./foul; Federer, 77./foul)
Puch, Waldstadion, 1200 spectators
Ref.: Mag. Christof Wagenhofer; Assistants: Patrik Porkert, Nurettin Seker
