Knox City v Doncaster

Knox City 0 Doncaster Rovers 1 (Half-time 0-0)

Doncaster Rovers continued their good recent form with a narrow 1-0 victory over Knox City, which slumped to its second straight loss after going nine games unbeaten.

With two strong defences, a single goal was always likely to be the decider in this game. The statisticians, however, would have been kept busy trying to keep up with the 10 cards (1 red) by the referee in a game that was highly competitive but never malicious.

Doncaster exerted much of the early pressure but had only a long range shot from Nasser to show for its efforts.

Knox’s thrusts usually were started by Nick Veljovic, either from his long throw ins or from dangerous free kicks. Hoogendyke got on the end of a free kick but the ball went narrowly over. Then in the 21st minute a long throw in was headed on and Pappas in the Rovers’ goal failed to take the ball cleanly. It fell to Hingert whose goalbound header was cleared off the line by the defender on the post doing his job well.

Peter Veljovic played a great inside ball to Saunders who cut inside his defender but his shot went into the side netting.

Doncaster’s best effort of the half came in the 42nd minute when Stefanidis, whose near post header from a corner flashed across the face of goal but no attacker was on hand to take advantage.

Nick Veljovic went close with a free kick from the edge of the centre circle in the 48th minute when he spotted Pappas off his line but the bar just cleared the angle of the bar with the keeper scrambling.

Much of the game at this stage was played in the middle third as the attackers found space and chances difficult to come by.

Jorgensen was not forced to make a decent save until the 72nd minute when did so to deny Strateas.

Rather fortunately, Doncaster snatched the winner in the 76th minute when a right wing corner was headed on by Cardillo at the near post. The ball hit McAleer in the stomach and found its way into the corner of the net.

Knox huffed and puffed to try to find the equaliser. The nearest they came was when Pappas could only parry a Nick Veljovic free kick and Swami’s follow up shot was blocked by a defender’s despairing dive

One of the highlights of the game was the tussle between Edgar and McAleer, two fine players who gave no quarter in an enthralling tussle. Needless to say they both finished up in the referee’s notebook, but they had plenty of company, Cardillo included as he received a second yellow card in the 90th minute.

Knox City Reserves beat Doncaster Rovers 1-0 with a late goal from substitute Miladi. A blistering 20 metre free kick was enough to seal the points in the last five minutes. 

Knox City: M. Jorgensen, G. Dos Santos, A. Edgar, D. Perazic, J. Hingert, G. Moon ( L. Grubic – 65th), N. Giannopoulos A. Saunders, N. Veljovic, P. Veljovic, M. Hoogendyk (H. Swami -75th). Subs not used – E. Sivic, K. McEvoy.

Doncaster Rovers: M. Pappas, R. Cardillo (Red Card – 90th), J. Strateas, M. Santoro, M. Dal Ben, A. Robertson, M. Wilson, R. Ardesi (M. De Angelis – 54th), G. McAleer, Z. Stafanidis (S. Alinjad – 88th), R. Nasser. Subs not used – M. Duros, T. Alessandrino, L. Kefalianos.