Silence of Thunder

By Stuart Teather
IF THERE were any critics remaining about the way Dandenong Thunder goes about its soccer, the team silenced them emphatically on Friday night.
The Thunder headed to Kevin Bartlett Reserve for their top-of-the-table Victorian Premier League clash with Richmond and the visitors came away on top, 3-2 in a thriller.
Dandenong had been criticised for playing too defensively and for lacking firepower up forward, but three goals to the Thunder proved they can match it with anyone in the league.
But Thunder coach Stuart Munro will tell you otherwise. “It’s funny, people always judge on how many goals you score, but look at the Coburg game a couple of weeks ago, we only scored two goals but we created five or six really good chances to score in that game,” he said. “I thought on Friday night we didn’t create a great deal, we didn’t have a lot of clear-cut chances and I thought at most we could only have scored three, maybe four goals. I tend to look at the opportunities, if we’re creating chances then we’re doing a lot of the right things.”
Dandenong got off to a dream start in the clash with star winger Hamlet Armenian finding the net in the first minute of play, beating the keeper after receiving a ball from captain Veton Korcarevski.
Richmond answered back before the quarter-hour mark with an Erhan Karakan wonderstrike; the Eagles’ defender finding the net from well beyond the box.
Despite the scores being locked a draw never looked likely as both sides attacked hard, and Richmond broke through again in the 37th minute, with Nicholas Robinson finding space in the box and shooting truly.
Richmond took a 2-1 advantage into the break and Munro said he was disappointed with his team’s first half.
“We just never really played, we played as poor as we have all season, we just did all the wrong things and we didn’t play well at all. )Richmond dominated the first half and they got two goals back – deservedly.”
Munro made two changes at half-time, removing James Thomas and Colin Quirk and bringing on Joe Di Iorio and Sam Bailey, and he said the move paid off.
“We were very positive in the second half and completely took control of the game.”
Bailey struck from a free kick in the 48th minute, then 10 minutes later it was Shane Rexhepi’s turn, the defender heading home a Marcus Stergiopoulos corner kick to give his side a 3-2 lead.