Wanderers, Mariners draw
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Fading A-League heavyweights Western Sydney Wanderers and Central Coast Mariners have carried their goalscoring woes of 2014 into the new year with a 0-0 draw at Pirtek Stadium on Thursday.
The two lowest-scoring teams in the competition, both averaging well under a goal a game, lived up – or should that be down – to their reputation.
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Wanderers have scored just two goals in five home games and netted just six times in 11 matches.
The Mariners, who exploded for three goals in their final match of 2014, have scored 10 times in 13 fixtures, but haven’t won since the opening round of the season.
Each have gone 12 games since their last A-League win, which in the Wanderers case was last season.
Bottom-of-the-table Wanderers are 12 points behind sixth-placed Melbourne City with a game in hand, while the eighth-placed Mariners trail the Victorian side by seven points, having played one more game.
Anyone suffering from a new year’s hangover wasn’t likely to be roused out of their lethargy, as both sides huffed and puffed but rarely looked capable of producing the guile needed to prise open the other’s defence.
Both sides created a number of chance, but lacked a clinical finisher.
The Wanderers had most of the on-target opportunities of the first half until the last minute, when home goalkeeper Ante Covic produced a triple save.
He parried a long-range effort and reacted quickly to block closer range efforts from Nick Fitzgerald and Josh Rose.
The Mariners wasted a series of free kicks within 30 metres of the Wanderers goal.
Nikita Rukavytsya was the Wanderers’ primary attacking threat in the first half.
In just the second minute, he was foiled by Mariners goalkeeper Liam Reddy and had another attempt on target later in the half, while Labinot Haliti headed a chance straight at the Central Coast gloveman.
Haliti put another header wide in the second half, in which Mariners fullback Josh Rose was a central figure at opposite ends in the first few minutes.
He cleared an acrobatic scissors kick from Wanderers debutant Nick Kalmar off the line and then flicked the roof of the net with an attempt at the other end.
-AAP