Gully gone as coach questions refs

A costly foul from Green Gully defender Daniel Jones gave Dandenong their fourth and final goal on Saturday. 88307 Picture: JARROD POTTERA costly foul from Green Gully defender Daniel Jones gave Dandenong their fourth and final goal on Saturday. 88307 Picture: JARROD POTTER

By ADEM SARICAOGLU
GREEN Gully’s Victorian Premier League title defence ended on a sour note on Saturday, going down 4-1 to the Dandenong Thunder in their preliminary final at Kingston Heath.
Despite a completely dominant opening half hour, the Cavaliers suddenly found themselves 2-0 down when Luke Sherbon scored a double within two minutes.
The first goal came courtesy of a controversial penalty in which Green Gully’s Mile Medjedovic received a yellow card.
Club manager Raymond Mamo insisted the scoreboard did not truly reflect his side’s performance, and said Medjedovic should never have seen yellow, let alone have the penalty given against him.
“The scoreboard did not reflect the way Green Gully played the game, the scoreboard actually reflected poor referee decisions,” Mamo told Star.
“I think we lost concentration at that time, and obviously Dandenong then came back and scored their second goal, which was a tremendous goal by Sherbon.
“You can’t take anything away from that second goal. It was well-taken and beautifully placed.”
The cards continued to flow when Dandenong’s Andrew Mullet was sent off in the 56th minute. And when Rodrigo Vargas scored for the Cavaliers 12 minutes later, Green Gully was back in the contest albeit briefly.
It took just a minute for Dandenong to restore their two-goal buffer when Liam Kearney found the back of the net, but the situation became dire for the Cavaliers when captain Jeffrey Fleming was given a second yellow and sent off for what Mamo described as an accidental handball.
“He’s not that silly to actually handball the ball deliberately in Dandenong’s attacking third,” Mamo said of Fleming’s incident.
“The ball was kicked into his hand and it was a case of ball to hand, not hand to ball, and he was very quick with issuing a yellow card.”
Dandenong’s ticket to this Sunday’s grand final was secured when Sherbon completed his hat-trick in the 80th minute.
Although Mamo said the refereeing spoilt the game, he was keen to give Dandenong credit for winning the contest, describing them as an “outstanding team”.
Mamo also credited his own group for their efforts on the day.
“The performance of our team, I thought, was excellent.
“In the first 30 minutes we were dominating, and we had set plans to play against Dandenong.
“I thought the boys carried those out and things were going to plan.”
After the match Mamo described the mood in Green Gully’s change rooms as quiet.
“There’s not much you can say to the boys,” he said.
“We believe that our lads did a great job on the job on the day, they gave 110 per cent and that’s all you can really ask for.”

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