Oh dear...

Victory score...

1-0

Bugger.

Good. Bugger off then.
It just gets worse and worse.
Another goal and a red card.

3 - 0
Call it what you like. Tragic, Disastrous. But not boring

4 - 0
All 4 to Archie Thompson.
Unbelievable.

Archie goes into the match with no goals against Adelaide then gets 4 in one match.

No captain, No coach.

Who leads United?

Pathetic by Adelaide.

this is a shocker of a game, no heart, no fight in the players, no pride.

hope the linesman is giving his money's worth and i don't mean match payments either. bloody refs
i can only hope our fans do the job on the streets instead.

This has got to be the most unbalanced grand final of any sport ever. How Adelaide got there is beyond me. They look like total amateurs next to Melbourne. To add to their unprofessionalism, their stupidity has resulted in no coach nor captain. What shame they have brought to the Adelaide fans.

It's a bloody disgrace.

EC - your comments are flat out offensive. After all your crap posted during the year about how we are all to harsh on the sixers given their lack of form, heart etc etc this year and you now label the Adelaide United team unprofessional and stupid and that they have brought shame to their supporters. These guys have made a GF and while they have ben thumped today by a better side they deserve credit for their efforts again this season. How about you practise what you preach and give credit where its due to a side that has played consistently all season and at least made the GF!

What happened today? To the ones who know nothing about soccer, tell me what it is that I saw that makes Adelaide fans proud. Its the first time in history that a championship was won on such a margin. Who allowed it to happen?

Look, how many matches has Kosmina missed due to be banned this year?

How many Adelaide players have been red carded or banned for doing stupid things ala the headbutt by Qu...

EC dare I ask if you watched the game? Infact if you have followed any of Uniteds season you will know exactly how they reached the grand final, rewind the clock two weeks and perhaps you will remember that United were only minutes away from hosting the g/f at Hindmarsh Stadium. I have no intentions of making excuses for a team that lost 6-0 (could quite easily have been more), but if you are looking for some slightly obvious game facts of why adelaide got so badly done perhaps the following few points (IMHO) might help. The decision to start Greg Owens at LB instead of the more defensive minded and perhaps more naturally suited to that position Adam van Dommele as a replacement for the suspended Matthew Kemp. Secondly, playing with 10 men for just under 3/4 of the match in a high paced 'transition' game if you will. Thirdly, the emotional and physical effects of a 120 + minute match with penalties compared to having a a week off such as Melbourne. As I recall one of the fox commentators saying in last weeks game "Ernie Merrick wont care who of these two teams he plays next week because he knows whoever he plays will come in having played 120 minutes of football".

What makes me proud is that they reached their first ever A League Grand Final. What makes me proud is that they are trying their hardest to establish a winning culture at a new club in a new league, and for the best part succeeding. The scoreline might have read 6-0 and it was painful to watch them outplayed and outclassed on the day but I was proud to see MY team in the g/f and I would rather that that say, not making the g/f or the finals at all. There is always next season and the future looks bright.

Piss off Kosmina for next season and they might have half a chance of doing better

as some one that has played soccer for 10 years i can recognise a team that were not playing with any heart or brains and passion for their team mates, some stupid decisions made with out team mates

TC, obviously your passion for soccer is a lot greater than mine. I was merely an observer of a game I am not very familiar with. When I talked about their stupidity, I referred to their actions not their personal intelligence. From someone as myself who does not know much about the game, what I saw quite clearly told me that things were drastically wrong. A team that was so outclassed to the extent that Adelaide was showed they did not deserve to be there today. The actions of the coach and captain of the team resulted in neither of them being there for their team. Even after the game finished and Aloisi was interviewed, I was disgusted to hear him talk about what he thought of the refs decisions. This sort of thing in basketball brings hefty fines. I don't know if it does in Soccer but if so, that's another stupid thing he has done. The culture behind soccer has always been something I have had problems in supporting. I thought the Melbourne fans were disgusting today after the game. They could have just been happy about the win but no they had to also rub salt into Adelaide's wounds. When each of the Adelaide United players and coach were called to the podium, there were continual boos for each of them and particularly the coach. This was a time that each of these people were at the lowest they could have been, they did not need to be shown so much disrespect in this way. The situation would have been reversed I know if Adelaide had won, but I won't be supporting such unsportsmanlike behaviour from fans. This is a fan base that I just don't fit in. As for Adelaide playing nearly two thirds of the game with only 10 players, that is pretty obvious to everyone including uninformed people like myself that they would struggle in the game, but they created that situation for themselves.

6-0

that would be the biggest victory of an grandfinal ever surely!

Personally I think the treatment the Melbourne fans gave the Adelaide fans on the podium was great, it's this kind of intense passion which is missing from basketball.

Aloisi finally showed on the big stage how pathetic a captain he is. Getting killed all day in the midfield and he goes and loses his head like that.

Still we were up against from the start. Adelaide plays that offside trap and losing Kemp last week to a dodge decision screwed us from the beginning. Add to two offside goals, 1 disallowed goal for us and playing with 10 and we were lucky it was only 6-0.

At least we have Asian Champions to look forward to 2 years in a row.

Does anyone know why our goal was disallowed?

A holding foul was called on Dodd I believe Double Clutch. A pathetic call, was not even close to a foul.

Aloisi was disgraceful. Give Costanze the captaincy next season, he is brilliant

Does anyone like Aloisi? (I'm yet to meet someone TBH.)

Very poor decision from the captain to throw away the game at that point.

Aloisi is old, slow and unfit. He's a bit like Farley - comes to play when we feels like it.

Drop him and get a young Brazlian gun like Fred from Victory.

lets be honest aloisi was playing out of position he's a striker and a true striker because they don't like to work to get the ball they prefer the ball be delived to their feet so they can play. to play him in midfield was a bad decision in my opinon.
everyone says one player doesn't makes a team but losing kemp had a massive affect on the team with out him using the width of the pitch became less affective and going down the guts made it easy for the victory to counter attack when ever they wanted

I like John but not Ross.

Booga, how can you say that Ross is a striker? Ross has never been a striker his life.

You must have him mixed up with his brother.

Was at the game, the atmosphere was intense throughout, especially after Victory scored the first one. Better than the atmosphere I experienced in the San Siro (only 25,000 bothered to rock up to that game).

The result didn't help our moods though, obviously!

EC, watch what I have to say on Ch 7 news tonight (if i get on!). True fans support their team no matter what (although we may also be prone to constructive criticism). We were still singing at 6-0, still cheering. They more than represented Adelaide. They deserved to be there more than any of the other 6 teams in the league.

On the other hand, if Dusty was playing for us....

Agreed #120326.
But that disallowed goal decision was crap. You would have thought they would have given them at least one..?

But if you look at the big picture, we had it against us from the start.
The FFA has it in for Kossie (look back as far as Muscat incident). Kemp was missing from the backdoor and Petta from the wing (injury).

Overall, the standard of referee has been shit this season.

Lets look ahead at the Champions League! I cant wait for the Asian referees, they are probably as good as those Australia got at the World Cup!

Libertine please explain how Adelaide deserved to be there more than any other team. They got there on a penalty shoot out against Newcastle the previous week. After yesterday's performance the first thing that came to my mind was what Newcastle were thinking. How a grand final spot was taken up by Adelaide and they could not even make a competition out of it. Newcastle probably felt that if they had been there in that position and even if they didn't win they would have atleast made Melbourne work a bit harder for the victory. A total waste of a grand final after the performance Adelaide put in. Melbourne as happy as they were winning it, was also robbed of the opportunity to win it hard thus giving even more satisfaction. It was practically handed to them on a silver platter.

I know the 36ers season has been pretty poor and yes I have walked out of the Dome on a number occassions not too proud of their performance but they got what they deserved. They missed out on the playoffs altogether. If you are going to make a grand final, you better be prepared to work bloody hard for the win.

EC.

I think the Premiership ladder might help you in your assesment. Oh, and that bar one mistake in the 3rd minute of injury time the GF would have been in Adelaide.

But Libertine, it would have been more embarrasing losing 6-0 in front of our home crowd...