Perth 1
Wellington 0
KEY POINTS:
The Perth Glory faithful, eventually rewarded with a desperately needed win over hapless Wellington Phoenix, voted with their feet even before a ball was kicked in last night's A-League battle of the tail-gunners.
The 4,400 who turned up at Members Equity Stadium to watch the dour scrap was the smallest in Perth's history.
That the game was decided by a late penalty had long seemed inevitable. The other joy for the home-town crowd was in seeing their team push the Phoenix down to their previously-held spot at the bottom of the table with their first win over the New Zealand franchise.
From the outset it was an arm wrestle between the two poorest-performing teams in the league. Neither were prepared to take risks, both were low on confidence.
The clearest scoring chances of the first half fell to the home side - both from freekicks - but they hardly threatened to unlock the Phoenix defence.
The tentative play through the midfield rarely looked like producing the early goal the game desperately needed.
The Phoenix had two half chances in the opening three minutes but Daniel was wide and Troy Hearfield, given the nod ahead of Vaughan Coveny as Shane Smeltz's striking partner, fired a weak effort straight into goalkeeper Jason Petkovic's hands.
Leilei Gao, given a start in the left midfield berth, was hardly sighted. Daniel, on the other flank too had few opportunities.
There was no excuse for the home side's tentativeness. The Glory went into the match having let in at least one goal in their previous 18 outings. In conceding 12 goals in the opening four rounds of the new season, the Glory had fashioned the worst start by any team in A-League history.
They had half chances to get something on the scoreboard but failed to seriously test Phoenix goalkeeper Glen Moss.
The best came in the 27th minute when referee Strebre Delovski ruled that, in turning the ball back to Moss, Richard Johnson had completed a back-pass on the six-yard line and awarded Perth a close-range freekick which Wayne Shroj pounded harmlessly into the defensive wall.
In sight of halftime, Tony Lochhead brought down Adriano Pellegrino. The resulting freekick was fired wide but headed back by James Robinson to Nikolai Topor-Stanley whose header was cleared off the line by Jon McKain.
The second half was, for long periods, much the same, with few shots in anger.
The visitors won their only corner in the 66th minute. The ball eventually cleared to Johnson but he fired wide.
Perth stormed into the last 20 minutes with genuine match-winning chances but Eugene Dadi and substitute Naum Sekulovski were denied by Moss.
Then, with 13 minutes to play they were rewarded when Dadi was brought down in a clumsy McKain challenge in the box. The Ivory Coast-born player bounced up to hit home from penalty spot.
