Monday 23 May 2011

An interesting article in the Southern paper

The aattached article was recently printed in the Hobart Mercury.  Fairly interesting reading,

Cup results highlight gap


THE Milan Lakoseljac Memorial Trophy statewide cup competition has highlighted a substantial gap in the standards of the northern and southern Premier Leagues.

In the preliminary round, Olympia Warriors, who are bottom of the southern Premier League table, easily defeated Somerset, who are third-last in the north, 8-1.

On Saturday, Olympia comfortably defeated Ulverstone 3-0. Ulverstone sits fourth in the north, just three points off top spot.

Olympia were missing eight first team players who were either unavailable or rested for the cup match.

Ulverstone coach Nick Owen said his team had under-performed on the day.
"If you're judging the northern league on today's performance, we don't [usually] play like that," Owen said.

"We've played like that once this year [in the league] and copped a hiding and we've played like that again [in the cup on Saturday]."

However, there were other indications that there is a worrying gap between the southern and northern competitions.

Sixth-placed northern team Riverside Olympic were bundled out of the cup by League One outfit Taroona, who play in the south's second tier.
Burnie United were the only northern team to advance past southern opposition, defeating Nelson Eastern Suburbs 3-1, after they failed to replicate fellow League One side Taroona's upset.

Burnie join Devonport City and Northern Rangers, who both advanced by beating northern opponents, as the three northern teams in the final eight.
In the likely event they draw southern opponents in the next round, it will be interesting to see how competitive they are in the quarter finals.

4 comments:

  1. What they fail to realise is that 3 of the 4 southern teams went out in week one of the final series last year so matters little.

    The draw was a bit hard on the northerners with all bar Devonport, Knights and Rangers having to travel and they all played northern sides to boot. So the 2 northern games were both all northern affairs.

    Would have expected River to get over Taroona not sure what happened there, Ulvie would be disappointed but as Nick said all teams have their days.

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  2. I don't know how to assess the difference in the leagues but there quite obviously is one. Style of play is vastly different when comparing the two and recent results might suggest a gap. However, being a northern boy and holding a huge amount of pride in the time that I spent at Devonport, I still believe the northern sides find ways to trouble southern opposition. The State final last year was a prime example of this.

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  3. the last senior men's North v South 2 leg Match... enough said.
    All the money goes to the South. if they want to talk about a gap. how about the gap between South Hobart and the rest of the teams down there. At least our league is more close and is not full of soft diver's that would go down if got clipped by a blade of grass (minus Issa of Northern Rangers)

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  4. Ross is just another typical southerner... He writes for the 'amazing' newspaper... The Mercury. Enough said. Well done Julius on writing a great article of tripe

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