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2026 Australia Cup final rounds thread

What a night ! What a brilliant win away from home. These are the nights that make following this club so special.

The match lived up to all the expectations of being a memorable night fought out by the two best teams in Victoria. The Hellas faithful showed up in numbers. We fully deserved the win but Preston did have their chances as well.

Looking at the match stats, we literally had the lion's share (pun intended) of possession and shots. We dominated the midfield and really controlled the tempo of the match. The midfield line up of Pasquali and Retre has to be one of the best across the respective NPL competitions around the country. Add Giannakopoulos in there, and we have real quality in those spots. Like many have said, that final touch kept letting us down all night. For some reason, we were missing that killer instinct to kill off the match by converting our numerous goal scoring opportunities.

The players did not stop running all night. They played with high intensity for most of the 90 minutes, and literally asphyxiated the Preston attackers. The press worked well and Preston tried to find ways of scoring through counter-attacks. At one point, Preston was playing passively rather than trying to take up the fight to South.

We need to acknowledge the heart, resilience and character of this team. Down 1-0 away from home in front of a large vocal and passionate home support, they dug deep to keep pushing forward in order to find that equaliser. It took two moments of personal brilliance to get the goals. Yoo's great efforts to shoot at target that led to Painter-Andrews scoring the equaliser, and then the quality of Cocks (witha great assist from Uchida) to shoot from long range and put us ahead.

The defence was close to brilliant last night. Jankovic completely marked Bonada out of the match forcing him to move further deeper away from goal to get the ball and thus nullifying his efforts. Uchida, Yoo, Cocks did not stop running and their quality put Preston under all sorts of pressure. They had no response to their attacking runs.

Preston to their credit are a very good team. They had their chances and have really good players in Tevere and Cuba, Scott and Cianci. We had the best of the first half, whilst Preston dominated the first 15-20 minutes of the second half, whilst we finished off strongly.

The scenes at the end of the match were brilliant. It was a match that we had to win given what was on the line. Nothing beats seeing players, officials and players celebrating as one.

One of the great outcomes of last night was seeing no post-match incidents. South and Preston supporters exited the stadium together and everyone went home safely. That's how football should be and long may it happen.
 
Ian Rush said:
A brilliant game last night complemented with a brilliant atmosphere...walking into BT Connor thru the front entrance last night there was not one issue whatsoever between Preston & South supporters. This only strengthens my argument that it takes a few dickheads to ruin it for everyone.
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Hoping moving forward we can resume playing these matches at night in an attractive time slot to maximise attendance at the ground and on TV.
 
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