By JARROD POTTER
SEASON’S end came for Dandenong City on Sunday as its NPL1 campaign drew to a close, 1-4 at the hands of Richmond.
City was no match for Richmond SC as the visitors tore through the City defence, but could only find the back of the net after 25 minutes of narrow misses.
Richmond captain Tom Cahill blitzed the City defence to open the accounts and found himself in a similarly easy position approaching the half as he blasted past Halil Gur and his City counterpart John Carroll to put Richmond two goals clear on the half.
The match-sealing goals from Peter Sawan (53’) and Andrew Goff (70’) left no question who the better side was on the day as Dandenong City was forced to march up the steps at Frank Holohan Reserve for the last time in 2014 defeated.
Daniel Buhic stormed through the Richmond defence, after his 57th minute substitution and made his mark to slot Dandenong City’s last goal of the year at the 72 minute mark, capping off a lacklustre end to their inaugural NPL1 campaign.
While the scorecard suggests otherwise, City goalkeeper Marko Stevanja put up an admirable fight in front of the net and made half a dozen strong saves to keep the scoreboard from tilting towards Richmond further.
“ …first year in NPL… the club wants the middle of the ladder and we probably finished one-two spots under,” Dandenong City coach Ivan Duzel said.
“For the season we had a lot of injuries to important players and these last six games we just couldn’t lift it up.
“Lot of mistakes individually like you saw today – it was a normal game and all of a sudden a couple of mistakes and we went two-nil down.”
While a 9-5-12 season isn’t much to smile about, Duzel thought the club made strong steps forward and will be better for the inaugural experience in the newly formed NPL.
“Results were up and down but there was some good football we played,” Duzel said.
“Last four or five weeks we didn’t play at the level we should or that I wanted to play… hopefully next year, with a little bit more experience in this league, will be better for us.”
Dandenong City will stay in NPL1 in 2015 after finishing 10th in the 14-team competition.
