Match Report Australia V Lubnan 8/7/13 (2nd game of U21 Asian Championship)
The Wombat Kings complaint to tournament officials about Australia having to play their opening game against India at the Madrid Centre, seemed to have resulted in a more “Australian” venue being chosen for tonights game.
Long time Buzzer Beater Manager Violated, best known for his emblem of a “Moose humping a hunter”, opened the doors of the Violation Arena for this eagerly awaited game against the 85th ranked Lubnan team, who at their last outing had beaten the 56th ranked Kazakhstan team.
Despite Lubnans last game victory, on paper this game looked a little bit of a mismatch as Lubnans top 4 paid players, had combined salaries of less than what Australias 20yo Centre Wayne (The Duke) gets paid.
This salary imbalance, Australias home court advantage, the fact that Lubnan had crunch timed their last game, the fact that Lubnan only has 18 active Managers as compared to Australias 453 and the fact that Lubnans 5 highest paid players had game shapes of 1 x proficient, 2 x respectable and 2 x mediocre, certainly had some Australian Managers quietly confident leading into the game.
The Wombat King had decided to reward players who had managed to keep their gameshapes up and had also brought it a 5th tall into the squad being Shane Goodes.
Goodes who is a distant relative of Sydney Swans player and dual Brownlow medalist, Adam Goodes was to debut in this game, thus moving Ted to the SF position.
The first 4 minutes of the game saw a Lubnan team flying high on self belief and a Wombat King contemplating abdication as the scores were tied on 6 all.
The Australian players finally worked their way into the game and by quarter time had established a lead of 23 to 10 courtesy of Lubnan hitting 4 of 22 shots to Australias 8 of 23
20yo old Lubnan player Ahmed Omar Kharabsheh was certainly playing better than what his respectable gameshape and 9K salary suggested he was capable of, by being the quarters highest point scorer with 6 points.
2nd quarter started to look a bit one sided hence I started to research the background of “Goodesy” and discovered that he was originally drafted by the Bell Park Super Cats and was as an 18 year old sold for only 75K.
His new team, which is his 4th, is the Italian 4th division team, Forze Vive Inzago and his Manager is Burinho has been working closely with the Wombat King over the last few weeks, hence his call up into the squad.
Goodsey also has the distinction of once having hit 50 points in a league game.
Back to the game and Australia was continuing to be somewhat wasteful with the ball as all the 5 starters were shooting under 50% from the field.
Enter Sacks who is known throughout the team as the “Hessian bag” and in the week leading up had been the centre of much discussion as to the amount of game time that he had been getting, made his way to the court.
In 5 short minutes he’d hit 7 points courtesy of 2 from 2 shooting (which included a 3) and 2 from 2 at the free through line.
Such an impact had the “Hessian bag” made that Wee Willem (Williams) was seen sitting on the very end of the bench in a tracksuit cursing his own respectable game shape that encouraged the Wombat King to give Sacks a run in the SF position.
Half time and Australia had a 55 to 21 lead and despite Qassem Melhems 12 rebounds, Australia with the Duke having 13, were leading the rebounds 36 to 24.
Last edited by Sid Vicious at 7/8/2013 8:25:50 AM