The only way is up says Paul Okon
The form of both Melbourne and Queensland at this point of the season bodes extremely well for the A-League’s fifth year
That-s one thing I-ve said we lack in Australia is movement off the ball and our players only seem to move if they have the ball; whereas when I look at Melbourne and Roar I see movement everywhere, which increases your options and makes it easier to score goals - and they did it extremely well last weekend.
Roar are playing some of the best football the A-League-s ever seen, and Melbourne, arguably, in season two played similar football; the way they performed the other night - you could say Adelaide were probably beaten before the match, after losing 2-0 at home - but the way Melbourne came out and overpowered them, really from the word go they wanted to put out a statement of just how good they-re playing.
Melbourne knew they were going directly to the final, we all knew that, but they wanted to show and prove to everyone that they believe they-re the best side, and they did that and did it very, very easily.
If you look at the way things have ended up, a Melbourne-Queensland grand final would probably be the most exciting. Adelaide have struggled to beat Melbourne this season and when you think about the grand final of a couple of years ago, you don-t particularly want a repeat of that and are afraid that if it does happen again, and all due respect to Adelaide, that the same result could occur.
So I think Queensland, and with the way they-re playing, certainly deserve to have that opportunity to play against Melbourne in the final, and going on the way both teams are playing it would be very difficult to say which team is favourite. It would be a really even contest. And that-s what we want from a grand final.
Looking back at the way the season-s gone, this is for me a real high point: that two teams at the end of the season are playing at such a high level knowing there-s going to be two new teams coming in. So I think it-s just going to raise the bar everywhere and every club is going to want to match what Melbourne and Queensland have done because they-ll know next year it-s going to be even harder with the two new teams entering the competition too.
It-s going to set it up for year five to be, for many reasons, the best year.