Thunder makes light of red-faced rescue

By Gavin Staindl
A BLOWN fuse has saved Premier League outfit Dandenong Thunder from a potential embarrassment after the lights at George Andrews Reserve turned off at the 58th minute when the home team was trailing 4-1.
A spokesperson in charge of lighting in South Dandenong said that there was no malice in the fortuitous timing of the event stating that nine other customers were affected by the outage shortly before 8.30pm.
The outage set the ground into a frenzy with Dandenong players claiming they were called cheats while Northcote officials believe one their players was assaulted by a member of the Thunder coaching panel. Dandenong coach Stuart Munro was quick to snuff out any truth in the matter that assistant coach Doug Hodgeson allegedly hit Northcote player Eddie Soares.
“No, no, there is no truth to it at all,” Munro said.
Though denying any physical contact occurred after the lights went out, Munro was happy to shed light on the situation.
“There was a few verbal clashes with some of our boys being called cheats but it is not their fault the lights went out,” Munro said. Northcote went up 4-1 after Thunder striker Jamie Reed had a chance to peg the score back to 3-2 but instead his missed shot and the ensuing counter-attack led to a Northcote goal. Munro said his players were very flat after the flu ravaged the Thunder squad on Friday night.
“We had five of our experienced players miss out on training on Friday because of illness and you could tell from the start of the game that we weren’t at the races.
“Having said that, we had more possession but every time they went forward they seemed to score … our defence that has been so rock solid was very fragile on Saturday night,” Munro said.
Dandenong Thunder now has a second chance to rewrite their mistakes. According to FFV rules, if the game is abandoned before the 72nd minute, 80 per cent of the match, then the game shall be replayed from the start at another date to be decided by the FFV
“Of course we didn’t ask it to happen and if it was us up 4-1 we would be feeling hard done by.
But Munro ruled out any chance of Dandenong asking the FFV to return the game to the 58th minute and have the 4-1 score line restored.
“You have to ask yourself is it the right thing to do? Is it within the rules? But we will just wait and see,” Munro said.