A well-drilled performance by the Football Kingz at Belmore Sports Ground on 7 November gained its just reward as they overcame third-placed Sydney Olympic 2-1 to climb to eighth on the National Soccer League table. At the same time, the result has given the Kiwi sports fan a welcome boost of confidence after a week in which the results recorded by the country's rugby league and, particularly, rugby representatives failed to do justice to the plentiful amounts of media coverage afforded them. As spectacles go, it wasn't the greatest soccer game you will ever see, largely due to a playing surface which was far from conducive to flowing football, and which, in all honesty, isn't suitable for a match at this level in its present form. Much of the match was punctuated by a multitude of misplaced passes by both sides, a situation arising directly from the state of the pitch. It resulted in a very disjointed affair, which neither side appeared to enjoy to any great extent, and with justification aplenty. Aside from a twenty-five yarder from Harry Ngata in the fifth minute, which George Bouhoutsos gathered well low to his left in the Olympic goal, and a twenty yard effort from Ante Juric struck straight at Jason Batty on the half-hour, the first thirty minutes were largely barren of goalscoring opportunities, or any really creative play of note. As the first half wore on, however, the Kingz looked the side more likely to open the scoring. Levent Osman, put through by Dino Mennillo, squandered a glorious opening in the 32nd minute when the pitch intervened, while a sweeping left-flank raid featuring Ngata, Marcus Stergiopoulos and Ivan Vicelich resulted in the last-mentioned's deep cross six minutes later being sent soaring over the crossbar by Chris Jackson, who had more time than he realised to make the most of the opening. Mennillo's rasping drive - Fred de Jong and Ngata prompted this 42nd minute chance - and deflected shot - Aaron Silva's deft turn and precise through ball invited this stoppage time opportunity - kept the Olympic fans on edge till the interval, as the visitors' cohesive play stifled anything the locals could muster in the first spell, reducing them to a couple of long-range efforts with which Batty dealt most comfortably. Much of what had been good in terms of Kingz attacks had emanated from the left flank during the first forty-five minutes, but that all changed in the second spell, the result of two half-time substitutions made by Sydney Olympic coach Branko Culina. Peter Zorbas, in particular, made a significant difference to the shape of the game for the home side, and provided Stergiopoulos, most notably, with a lot more defensive work in the second half, particularly in the first twenty minutes of the spell,

in which the Kingz were very much on the back foot. That said, Olympic carved out just one clear-cut chance in that time, Peter Tsekenis and Gabriel Mendez combining to provide the team's leading scorer, Pablo Cardozo, with the chance to add to his account for the season. Batty was alert to the danger, and was quickly off his line to narrow the angle, as a result of which Cardozo was forced well wide of goal, meaning Olympic's best chance to date was lost. The Kingz weathered the storm, and struck back with a vengeance. In the 76th minute, Mennillo and de Jong combined on the right, with the former curling in a wicked cross with which the Olympic defence failed to deal. Osman ghosted in on the blindside of the defence and crashed a volley past a startled Bouhoutsos, only to see it cannon to safety off the crossbar. Olympic failed to heed the warning, and paid the price three minutes later. Jackson danced past three challenges on the left before laying the ball back towards Ngata. From twenty-five yards, he let fly with a first-time screamer which crashed into the top right-hand corner of Bouhoutsos' goal, the custodian beaten all ends up by a smashing strike which seemed certain to be the match-winner given the general tightness of the encounter. Within sixty seconds, however, Olympic were level, Cardozo sending Batty the wrong way from the penalty spot after substitute Chris Kalantzis had been felled in the box by a clumsy challenge. This stirred the locals into life once more, and Zorbas was narrowly astray with a twenty-yarder two minutes later, after Cardozo had held off a sturdy Che Bunce challenge to set up his team-mate. But the natives were well and truly silenced in the 83rd minute when Olympic failed to deal with Mennillo's inswinging free-kick from the right, and made the cardinal mistake of allowing Vicelich time and space in which to pick his spot from ten yards. The pony-tailed defender's header bulleted home to put the Kingz 2-1 in front, a scoreline they maintaned to the end, thus securing them their first win on foreign soil. Olympic:  Bouhoutsos, Tsekenis, Baillie (Kalantzis, 78), Juric, Wilson, Thomas, Phillips (Zorbas, 46), Emerton, Mendez, Cardozo, Arambasic (Carle, 46 (booked, 50)) Kingz:  Batty, Perry (booked, 46), Bunce, Vicelich, Stergiopoulos, Jackson, Ngata, Osman (Jones, 81), Mennillo (booked, 60), de Jong (Moya, 90), Silva (Middleby, 73) Referee:  Simon Micallef