Source: Radio New Zealand
Auckland FC celebrate their shootout success against Melbourne City in the A-League, on Saturday. Andrew Cornaga/www.photosport.nz
Dreams and manifestation were behind Auckland FC’s penalty shootout win that has sealed back-to-back A-League semi-finals appearances.
Last season, goalkeeper Michael Woud was sitting on the bench while his team-mates were playing finals football.
This season he has played a big part in why Auckland is back in the final four.
A crucial penalty save in the Elimination Final win over Melbourne City on Saturday at Mt Smart was a situation Woud believed keepers played for.
Auckland and City were level at 1-1 after extra time, sending the game to a penalty shootout.
“It’s a goalkeeper’s dream to get to a penalty shootout and it’s a little bit selfish but it’s kind of an opportunity to be a hero. Lucky enough for me and for Auckland it went our way.”
Woud and his opposite Patrick Beach were beaten six times before Woud saved City’s seventh attempt.
Cue an early celebration from an over zealous Jake Girdwood-Reich who believed that was enough for Auckland to seal victory after a hard fought game in front of their home fans.
“I didn’t know what he was doing, he counted wrong but that doesn’t surprise me,” Woud said of his 22-year-old Australian team-mate.
However, it was actually the experienced defender Dan Hall finding the back of the net with Auckland’s seventh penalty that ended City’s championship defence and sent Auckland to the next stage of the finals.
Coach Steve Corica said Hall was confident to be called on in the match defining moment.
Hall has been in the A-League since 2020, has played 135 games and scored four goals previously for Central Coast Mariners.
He chose a big moment to score his first for Auckland.
“Pretty surreal to be honest,” Hall said of his match winner.
“After Woudy made that great save, I said to Nando [Pijnaker] ‘you know, I think I’m going to win it here’, and luckily I manifested it.”
In the lead up to the game Hall had mixed success in penalty taking during training, including missing one the day before the game.
“I’m lucky I scored today.”
After being 1-0 up until the fourth minute of added time, Hall said it was “gutting” to concede late and send the game to extra time.
“I’m very impressed with so many of the boys because I didn’t know that we had the legs in us.
“The team talk after the extra time was just keep pushing. If we have to win it in pens, we have to win it in pens.
“We showed that we can fight and win games and it’s obviously great for the confidence.”
Guillermo May, who scored Auckland’s goal in regular time and a penalty, celebrates with Jake Brimmer on Saturday. Andrew Cornaga/www.photosport.nz
After an injury-hit season, Corica is starting to get some players back on the park at the right time, including Pijnaker and Jake Brimmer who returned to action off the bench on Saturday.
“Hard work for them, they haven’t done a lot of training so they had to probably play longer than we expected as well,” Corica said.
“They showed courage, they dug in, they defended obviously that 30 minutes really well. I think we had a couple of good chances ourselves to maybe win the game in that last 30 minutes but obviously we’ve got to do it the hard way.”
Despite taking the game down to the wire Corica was still confident of success.
“We always believed that we were going to win.
“Obviously, the way it happened you can’t predict that. But we’re full of confidence as a team.
“This was a do-or-die match, next couple of games we don’t have to win it in the first game at home.
“We’d like to, but we know it goes over two legs and if we have to do this in the second leg in Adelaide we’ve got to show bravery when we take our penalties and hopefully we come out on the best side and we make it to a final.”
Auckland are next expected to face Adelaide United, in the first match of the home and away semi-finals.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand