ALTONA Magic suffered a 1-0 western-derby loss to Werribee City
after a frustrating day at the office in Football Federation Victoria
men’s state league 1.
Magic will find it hard to rejoin the promotion race after losing a
“six-point game” it dominated for large swathes. They are four points
behind second-placed Sunshine George Cross with four games remaining,
but can reduce the deficit when the sides meet at Paisley Park on
Sunday.
PICTURE GALLERY: Altona Magic v Werribee City
Altona football operations manager Rubin Todorovski said his side would never throw in the towel.
“You keep training, you keep working, you keep playing to win, the
season’s not over,” he said. “It’s very hard, but you just don’t know,
it’s going to go down to the wire.”
You have to suspect the Magic could be left to rue a litany of
missed chances against the Bees. They started promisingly away at Galvin
Park, but the Bees struck first through Julien Cassano.
“We started well, we dominated play and were unlucky not to score first,” Todorovski said.
“Then Werribee started to get on top of us, got a chance and put it away.”
The second half saw the best chances created by the Magic, but the ball refused to go in.
Oleksiy Khrapko hit the post twice, Robert Naumovski fluffed a chance in the box and Bobby Vidanovski’s radar was off.
“I don’t know how we didn’t score, we hit two posts and had about
four different goalscoring opportunities,” Todorovski said. “We threw
everything at them and it just didn’t want to go in..”
The Bees could have doubled their lead from the penalty spot, but Max Tommy dived to his left to tame the shot.
The Magic had one last shot at an equaliser, but Steven Cudrig’s
header looped over the crossbar. Cudrig was the best on ground, playing
in a variety of roles.
