Northcote City
Position: 8th, 16 points
The Good: Northcote’s season doesn’t make for great reading, but at least they’ve been able to win enough games to stave away the relegation threat for now, including a few impressive victories against Port Melbourne, Pascoe Vale and Green Gully throughout the campaign.
The Bad: Consistently inconsistent. A good win can be followed up by a poor loss. Defensively a worry, conceding four goals or more on four occasions to concede the second most goals in the competition.
Verdict: The glory days are behind Northcote for now, but their gritty recent performances against South Melbourne and Green Gully suggests they’ll keep fighting to the very end under Goran Lozanovski. C
North Geelong Warriors
Position: 14th, 5 points
The Good: A 6-1 win over Green Gully. A first clean sheet of the season against the rampaging Bergers. Robbie Zadworny’s six goals. 17-year-old Nikola Jurkovic’s development as a player. They haven’t really been humbled in any game by a huge margin.
The Bad: Zadworny’s departure. Anthony Banovac yet to debut. Costly defeats in the “six-pointer” clashes (Werribee, Northcote, Avondale etc). Six points behind second last, and seven away from safety.
Verdict: It’s been a tough initiation for the newly promoted Warriors, who have struggled to keep up with the high standard of competition. Apply Murphy’s Law to the newcomers, because from heartbreaking last minute losses, chances going begging, injuries and key departures, everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. To their credit though, they have been competitive, despite what the ladder suggests. E+
Oakleigh Cannons
Position: 10th (with a game in hand), 14 points
The Good: Three wins from five to begin Arthur Papas’ revival, including inflicting South’s first defeat of the season. Other than that, it’s been a tough slog, with some come-from-behind results under Bleiberg avoiding a total disaster to start the season.
The Bad: Where to start. Last season’s runners-up had one win from eight to start the season, with the subsequent chopping and changing of coaches and players leading to some instability at Jack Edwards Reserve. When it seemed like Papas’ tenure was getting off on the right foot, along came a loss against a 10 man Werribee, gifting the Bees their first win of the season. The club’s leading goalscorers, Dusan Bosnjak and Goran Zoric, only have three goals each.
Verdict: For all the doom and gloom, you feel there’s light at the end of the tunnel and Oakleigh have enough quality – especially with recent signings – to make a finals charge. In saying that, four of their next five games are against top six sides (South Melbourne, Knights, Port, Hume), the next couple of months will be crucial to determine if the revival really is on. D+
Pascoe Vale
Position: 7th (with a game in hand), 18 points
The Good: On their day, Paco are very pleasing to watch under the guidance of Vitale Ferrante. Jake Nakic and Joseph Youssef have nine goals between them, Jake Halliday has impressed in full-back, the former A-League guys have been leading by example, while there’s been a senior debut for 16-year-old Matt Conversano.
The Bad: The club’s start to the season, yielding three consecutive defeats against Heidelberg, Port Melbourne and Northcote. Whilst it didn’t quite lead to panic stations, it did mean Paco were chasing the pack early on. They didn’t necessarily play badly either, but seemed to crumble or not capitalise on their good play.
Verdict: After finishing 8th last season, the current position somewhat continues Pascoe Vale’s safe mid-table existence, but relative to the resources other clubs have at their disposal, it’s a decent improvement. Greater consistency of results would be on the radar at this stage of the season for Ferrante’s men. B
Port Melbourne Sharks
Position: 6th, 19 points
The Good: Port’s blistering start to the season, which saw four wins from six games, including 4-0 triumphs over Oakleigh Cannons and North Geelong Warriors. It was spearheaded by Kamal Ibrahim, who to date has five goals and many more assists.
The Bad: The ugly patch of form after that – four consecutive games without a goal and five winless, including an unfortunate 2-2 result against South which included a late equaliser with a handball in the build-up.
Verdict: Port have gone from just surviving the drop in 2014 to becoming a bit of a competition dark horse in 2015. And now with some mid-season additions it could get even better – provided they don’t repeat the lean patch that dogged them for weeks. B
South Melbourne
Position: 3rd, 33 points
The Good: Until last weekend, South’s juggernaut was rolling on, not losing a league game since August 2014. It wasn’t always pretty, with some scrappy wins in the process. A combination of the usual suspects and new dogs did the damage, as Lujic boasted a double digit goal tally and a deadly partnership with Brennan up front, Roganovic was an astute signing at the back, and the emergence of Andy Kecojevic was pleasing to see.
The Bad: It was smooth sailing – Community Shield, unbeaten start to the season etc – before the club, fans and football Gods seemingly became bored of South winning and created some destabilisation to keep things interesting off the pitch. There was Brennan’s courting by Newcastle, along with a stoush between fans and a player, that hadn’t been able to cause a distraction on the pitch before Friday’s loss to Oakleigh Cannons.
Verdict: Before Friday, even when they hadn’t been playing well – and there have been few such games – South kept winning or at least drawing. Of the three ladder leaders, South are probably still the team with most room to improve. A
Werribee City
Position: 12th, 12 points
The Good: Wins on the board, finally! Two of them in fact, and it’s reward for the Bees’ toil this season, which has seen many honourable losses and points going begging. The likes of Cristaldo and Cudrig have had stellar seasons to date.
The Bad: Up until three weeks ago, Werribee just couldn’t win a game, too often falling behind needlessly and needing to mount a comeback, only to fall just short. Despite possessing the 6th best defensive record, too often Werribee just haven’t been able to put the ball in the back of the net at the other end, scoring the equal least goals of all teams in the NPL.
Verdict: It’s a credit to the quality of the league that Werribee can be much improved on last season but still not win for so long. The Bees have actually looked to try play the ball along the ground at times and not just sit back. Nino Ragusa’s men have a long way to go, but it ain’t all bad, especially if new man Aguek can keep scoring up front. C-