MATCH REPORT | Essendon Royals fall short against quality Sydenham Park

Essendon Royals suffered a tough home loss to second-placed Sydenham Park at Cross Keys Reserve on Friday night in Men’s State League 1 North-West action.

The Royals battled well in the second half to equalise through Joel Nikolic after finding themselves down 1-0 at half-time, but could not prevent Sydenham from scoring again with Christopher Davies scoring the winner for the visitors in the 81st minute.

Essendon started the game well and looked organised right across the park as Michael Ferrante directed traffic through the middle of the park.

Aaron Ward returned to the starting XI following a long road back from injury and added balance to the midfield, while Jamie Gazelle also made his return to the starting line-up.

Joel Nikolic looked to combine with the returning Dave Van’t Schip and worked some decent half-chances, but nothing to trouble Juro Salic in the Sydenham goal.

The best chance of the half fell to Essendon’s Graham Kelly, who did well to bring a difficult ball under his spell and produced a cheeky lob of the onrushing goalkeeper, only to see it bounce wide of the post.

Sydenham, to their credit, were equally organised and enjoyed strong spells, but the first half remained an incredible even tussle.

The difference between the two sides came in the form an absolutely superb free-kick, sweetly struck into the top corner by Ryan Newman after 29 minutes.

The brilliant strike left Andre Jannese no chance and meant the Royals had to head into the half-time break a goal down.

The Royals came out swinging in the second half, with Kelly providing plenty of drive through the middle of the park.

The first chance fell to Nikolic who just could not get his shot off, but the Royals target man eventually made amends with a fine finish after 59 minutes to level the scores.

The two teams traded chances as the half wore on, and while the Royals arguably had the better of the two, Sydenham proved clinical when a long ball floated over the Royals defence was expertly guided in by Davies.

Despite time being against them, Royals pushed hard for an equaliser, but were left with nothing to show with their efforts.

Salic produced a fine save to stop a point-blanc header from a free-kick routine, before Kelly struck the cross bar from five yards out as he got on the end of a fiercely driven cross across the face of goal.

Royals coach Vaughan Coveny felt his side was unlucky not to finish the game at least level with Sydenham and praised his players for their effort.

“I thought we deserved something out of the game against a very good team,” he said.

“I was proud of the efforts and I thought we took the game to them.

“We were proactive in how we played and we put them under pressure, but in the end it wasn’t good enough.”