Logan Rogerson celebrates a goal during the A-League semifinal match between Melbourne Victory and Auckland FC. Photo / AAP Image/Rob Prezioso/ Photosport
Auckland FC coach Steve Corica has no doubt.
It’s just over an hour before kickoff, in the bowels of AAMI Park, and the veteran mentor has just completed his pre-match television commitments. As he chats with director of football Terry McFlynn, the Herald ambles over, having taken a wrong turn on the way to the media area. I ask Corica how the players are ahead of the biggest match of their season so far.
“They’re ready to go,” he says. “They’re calm, excited ... focused.”
Coaching is an inexact science – and it’s not always easy to read a squad’s readiness, given all the intangibles at elite level. But Corica knows his team well, after an intense season. He had liked what he saw at training that week, a step up from the previous one, and also what he felt since they arrived in Melbourne two days before.
And he’s spot on. In challenging circumstances – both the weather conditions and hostile crowd – Auckland thrive, with one of the best A-League playoff displays by a New Zealand team in their 1-0 win, at a stadium that has been a graveyard for sporting franchises from this country.
The Herald joins the large queues at Auckland airport at 4am, with the Qantas self-check-in terminals down. Auckland FC fans are prominent in their replica shirts, including some that made the trip to Sydney a month earlier.
“We couldn’t miss this one,” they say.
In Melbourne, Auckland train at a local ground close to their central city hotel. The field is a “bit scratchy”, according to a staff member, but it is a good session. Later, Jake Brimmer speaks to the media, clearly fired up to face his old team, after eight seasons with the Victory.
“It’s a club I love, I still love,” says Brimmer. “Obviously their feelings are a bit different, from how they welcomed me back a few weeks ago. I’ve got no hate for Melbourne Victory but I wear this badge now.”
Young striker Jesse Randall is up next, tipped to start in the absence of Max Mata.
“The most important thing as a footballer is to not play the occasion,” says the 22-year-old. “The nerves are obviously going to be there, but as long as I just run it off, it’ll be all good.”
Corica seems relaxed. He is impressed with the size of the media pack that had travelled – “must be a big game” – and felt hopeful.
“It will come down to what happens at both ends, both 18-yard boxes, and if we defend well, we’ve got a good chance of winning the game,” says Corica.
The team are given the afternoon off, with players wandering out for a coffee or catching up with family, while others relax in their riverside hotel.
Just before noon, I run into Hamish Barton in the hotel lobby. A former provincial cricketer and White Ferns coach, Barton is the mental performance coach at Auckland FC.
He has driven the reset theme since the Premiers Plate and believes the team will fire in this “mini-season”.
“They’ve worked hard,” he says. “They know what they have to do.”
Lunch is followed by team meetings and a final video session, before some time to chill ahead of the 7.30pm kickoff.
“It’s later than usual,” says Barton. “You appreciate your roommate on these days.”
The Auckland FC fans gather in a local watering hole at 2pm but are later asked to leave, with the regulars evidently not enjoying the chanting and songs. They relocate to a more receptive venue, also taking in the Warriors’ dramatic win against the Dolphins.
Just after 6pm, there are already plenty of Victory fans milling around outside AAMI Park. Walking through the internal corridors, it’s hard not to be impressed with the wall-to-wall displays of their trophy-laden history. There are their championships in 2007, 2009, 2015 and 2018, and grand final appearances in 2010, 2017 and 2024. There are the star players. They are a big deal, with influential backers from around the city.
However, the vast majority of the press box favour Auckland tonight.
“They’re too tough defensively,” says one. “How do you get through that wall?”
Another feels the Victory might prevail over 90 minutes but “they can’t beat Auckland over 180 minutes”.
Auckland warm up, before going to salute the travelling support. After a rousing pre-match, with Stand By Me belted out by the massed Victory support, the game gets under way.
The intensity is apparent from the first moments, enhanced by teeming rain. Players fly into challenges, with referee Ben Abraham content to let quite a lot go. Auckland are initially caught off guard – captain Hiroki Sakai gestures to the official a couple of times after teammates are clattered – but they soon adapt.
“We were a bit surprised,” midfielder Louis Verstraete tells the Herald the next day. “But it was okay. We’re a physical team, so it was good for us. I enjoyed it.”
Auckland withstand the early barrage, as Victory push, urged on by the crowd. There are nervy moments, with Auckland retreating further and further, while keeper Alex Paulsen has a rare miscued pass over the sideline.
“They can’t stay that deep,” says a journalist next to me, accurately.
But central defenders Dan Hall and Nando Pijnaker form an impressive barrier, while combative Belgian Verstraete seems to be involved in everything. And Randall looks sharp, running “off the shoulder”, as he loves to do.
Chances go begging at both ends but Auckland are working their way into the game, starting to get a foothold.
Sakai hurls a couple of long throws into the area, aided by a towel near the sideline to dry the ball.
“Victory won’t like that,” says an Australian scribe with a laugh. “That ballboy will be in trouble.”
Inevitably, a few minutes later, the towel has disappeared.
A few doors down, Auckland FC co-owners Ali Williams and Anna Mowbray are clearly enjoying the occasion, with Williams prominent in his support, along with other invited guests in a corporate box.
They include United States-based former All White Noah Hickey, who has a small Auckland FC shareholding and has flown in for a long weekend, and fellow former national representative Noel Barkley.
Halftime passes quickly, with kids’ games on the field and a veritable mountain of pizza in the media room. After the restart, Randall goes close, lifting his shot over the bar after being set up by Guillermo May, before the 64th-minute goal, thanks to Logan Rogerson’s decisive intervention, after clever work near the sideline from Francis de Vries.
Rogerson sprints straight to the travelling fans with most of his teammates – “it was a sign of gratitude for them coming all the way [here]” – while the experienced Sakai saves his legs, embracing Paulsen on halfway.
From there, the game pivots, Melbourne pushing more but unable to create much, with Auckland increasingly resolute and compact.
Time runs down, before the remarkable episode involving Neyder Moreno, as the Colombian’s shot hits both posts, before rebounding into the grateful arms of Victory keeper Jack Duncan.
That freakish miss seems to put a different complexion on the night but Corica is still thrilled, as he enters the press conference room flanked by beaming chief executive Nick Becker and McFlynn.
“We knew we had to go to another level,” says Corica. “They’ve got a great bond together and that shows on the pitch.”
Victory coach Arthur Diles is magnanimous in defeat – “they’re a very strong team” – but also bullish, hoping to become just the second club since 2021 to overturn a first-leg semifinal deficit in the A-League.
“It’s only 1-0 and it’s only halftime,” says Diles. “We’ve got a lot of belief in us, a lot of confidence.”
Outside, reporters speak with Rogerson, exhausted from a physical, “very intense” match, admitting he was a “bit shellshocked” in the first 15 minutes.
“They kept coming and coming,” says Rogerson. “But obviously as the game went on, I grew into it and the team did as well.”
Hall wanders by for a drug test, before a smiling Brimmer emerges. Happy about that, Jake? asks the Herald.
“Hell yeah,” he says, banging the large kit bag he is hauling with his fist. “Hell yeah.”
Tommy Smith is the last interview. He pays tribute to his teammates and the fans, and is confident but wary about the second leg.
“Anything can happen and we need to be at our best,” says Smith, as the last squad members file past.
When the Herald returns to the hotel around midnight, Corica and his staff are enjoying a quiet drink in the strangely named Dive Bar, along with Hickey and other guests. While there is no doubt Moreno’s miss was a big flashpoint, one staff member has a positive take, as the bartender calls for last orders.
“The thing is, it will make the boys even hungrier,” he says. “If it’s 2-0, maybe you might think it’s all over. They have so much to play for. We can’t wait.”
Michael Burgess has been a Sports Journalist for the New Zealand Herald since 2005, covering the Olympics, Fifa World Cups, and America’s Cup campaigns. He is a co-host of the Big League podcast.
New Zealand Herald football writer Michael Burgess wraps up the Auckland FC's dramatic A-League semi-final first leg in Melbourne and looks ahead to Saturday's match.