Disappointment reins as Ospreys let finals chances slip

Jonathan Newman hates to use the word ‘disappointing’.

But there were a few things he was disappointed about in Southern United’s 2-0 loss to Sawtell on Saturday.

Firstly, there were elements of his side’s performance that were disappointing and then there were a couple of incidents that his team – he believes – were on the wrong end of.

“Video cameras are great, but they’re also extremely antagonising for coaches like myself afterwards when what you thought you saw is revealed to be the case,” he said.

“We had [a goal] disallowed too which all of the spectators standing a metre behind the linesman disagreed with him and then you look at the video and say ‘at worst he’s level’.

“But on the day it comes down to interpretation and we’ve got to be respectful of that. Had we played better in the second half I probably wouldn’t even be mentioning these incidents.”

Newman was disappointed at some of the chances his team couldn’t convert – and they had quite a few.

“We squandered a lot of chances in the first half of that game including a goalmouth scramble where we had three separate strikes of the ball and all of them went straight at the goalkeeper,” he said.

“That was somewhat typical of what our season has been with that lack of clinical finishing when we really need it.”

On Tuesday night the Ospreys returned to form with a 5-0 win over Taree, but Newman is disappointed their future in the 2022 Coastal Premier League Men’s semi-finals is now not in their hands.

Seven days ago they controlled their own destiny.

“Now we’ve handed that away a bit,” the coach said.

“I was doing the permutations and that loss (to Sawtell) does now put us in a position to rely on other results. We can only do what’s set in front of us and that was beating Taree on Tuesday night which we did.”

Also not helping Southern’s cause is an abandoned fixture between Macleay Valley and Northern Storm earlier in the week where Rangers led 3-1 after 80 minutes before the match was abandoned due to fog.

“Those sides are in and around where we are and the outcome of that game will influence our chances because we’ve got to play both of them,” Newman said.

“If I was going to put out my wish list I would have hoped they drew, but I don’t know what the outcome of that is because the fixture got abandoned so we’ll just have to wait and see.”