Saturday takes Alan Mulcahy and Alan Kearney back to a club they both served with distinction as players. Port Melbourne is old ground for the pair of them, and they return with the Redbacks chasing a play-off place and the Sharks fighting to stay in the division.
Eltham sit seventh on 32 points with two rounds left, which puts a ceiling of thirty-eight on the season. Breaking into the top six is, of course, the target as the promotion play-offs loom at season’s end in September. The path is narrow and worth naming plainly: beat Port Melbourne, beat Melbourne Knights at The Web on 30 August, and hope FC Bulleen Lions avoid defeat away at FC Melbourne Srbija the same afternoon. Anything less than two wins almost certainly ends it, so the requirement is simple even if the outcome is not.
The reverse fixture finished 8-0 at Eltham North Reserve in May, and it tells you nothing about Saturday. Port arrived that night in the middle of a coaching change, with a caretaker on the bench and a squad missing several of their better players, and our own report at the time declined to make much of it. That was the right call then and it holds now.
Since then Port have taken seven points from four matches. They won 1-0 away at FC Melbourne Srbija in Round 21 and 1-0 away at Manningham United in Round 23, then drew 1-1 at home with Melbourne Knights on 15 August against a side that has run away with the division. Four goals conceded across those four matches, from a team whose season rate is better than two a game.
They need this more than the ladder suggests. Bottom on 16 points, only a win keeps their survival maths alive for another week, and they will start at home with a support that has just watched them hold the leaders.
On the raw numbers it is the best attack in VPL Men 1 against the worst, 49 goals against 12. The 5-0 over Manningham United on 14 August had five different scorers and a clean sheet for Eltham, and Marcus Day’s goal on 64 was worth something on its own after the injury that took him off back in Round 6. But a side conceding four in four is not the side that shipped eight in May, and Eltham will need to be sharper than the scoreline history implies.
Kick-off is 2:00pm on Saturday at STRUC Steel Stadium. Two results matter to the Redbacks that afternoon, and only one of them is in the team’s hands.
Up the ‘Backs.