It’s doubtful that the cliches needed to accurately describe the match between the Bulls and the Wanderers last night at Campbelltown Stadium have been invented yet.
Macarthur FC walked away with the three points after their last gasp 4-3 victory, but the visitors, it has to be said, put in a heroic performance, especially after a red car forced them to play with 10 men for most of the second half.
It was one of those crazy football games that nobody could have predicted given the forecast for an extremely hot Sunday in South Western Sydney.
Kick off was pushed back from 5pm to 7pm, but even at that later time the temperature at Campbelltown was well above 30 degrees Celsius.
We don’t know what the respective coaching instructions were but it’s reasonable to assume that “conserve energy’’ would have been a big part of it.
And yet, from the opening whistle the end-to-end action was gobsmacking.
The helter-skelter pace did not stop for the entire match, which lasted more than 100 minutes thanks to generous injury time allocations from the officials.
Six of the goals came in the first half, in what some are calling the best A-League match of the season.
Bulls got the ball rolling 16 minutes in when their French forward Valere Germain beat the goalie from the penalty spot for a 1-0 lead.
The lead by the home side didn’t last long, to nobody’s surprise – four minutes to be exact.
The Wanderers pounced on a Bulls defensive error to equalise, and just eight minutes later they grabbed a 2-1 lead.
The non stop action continued for just three more minutes before young Bulls winger Raphael received the ball at the halfway mark.
As he does, he aggressively took on the defence, and in a brilliant solo effort beat everyone, including the goalie, to make it 2-2.
Ten minutes later, and another poor defensive read from the Bulls, the Wanderers scored a third goal to grab the lead at 3-2.
Both sides were attacking like men possessed but neither was paying too much attention to the fundamentals of defence.
So it came to pass that the home side scored their third goal with just 30 seconds on the clock to make it 3-3.
Defender Uskok headed the ball from a corner, aiming for the other side of the goal mouth where Germain was waiting to score his second for the match.
It fair to say that defences were a little tighter in the second half, especially after the visitors went down to 10 men.
But the pace of the game hardly slowed, with plenty of chances going begging at both ends.
As the game went into the last five minutes the Bulls upped the ante and with just seconds left Germain made it a hat-trick – and there was jubilation in the stands, especially among the Bulls Den faithful.
The win has pushed the Bulls to fourth spot on the ladder.
In Round 16 this Saturday, February 10, Macarthur head south to tackle Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park from 5:30pm.
A week later the Bulls are back home to host competition leaders Wellington Phoenix.
