Sean Walsh blogs on the Melbourne Heart for BPL. Click here if you want to join our blog network.

Surprise, surprise, the Mariners played in a game that was boring and difficult to watch.  It seems the more things change the more they stay the same.  A change of coach hasn't much changed the game style.

Supposedly playing with three up front, but they seemed the only three to make it across halfway.  They went ahead to a terrible piece of defending and then set about stopping Heart from playing. (Heart singular sounds silly, so from now on to my mind they are Hearts.)

Hearts started the better but then conceded a terrible goal at a set piece after 15 minsutes.  The rest of the half was a blur of sub standard play and it was a relief to hear the halftime whistle.  Hearts again started the second half the better with Skoko starting to find more of the ball.  For most of the game Skoko had Matt Simon buzzing around him and wasn't able to get turned to force dangerous situations.

Simon, ostensibly a striker, but tonight was merely a spoiler.  It is a role he seems perfectly suited for, possessing a competitive streak that steps well across the line into annoyance.  He was one of the better players on the park but to my mind was lucky that his card was adjudged to be yellow not red.  He was even more lucky that the referee, Chris Beech, seemed unaware that there is a penalty for persistent fouling.  I'm just not sure how far the Mariners can go playing such a conservative style of game.

Hearts were a few runs short of where they need to be.  Sibon was reasonable, Terra showed flashes, Skoko as mentioned marked out of it and Worm was terrible.  They were often on different wavelengths and unable to take advantage of Sibon's hold-up play.  Their defence put

itself under unnecessary pressure at times and hasn't clicked yet.

One other area of concern is that the midfield seemed to run out of puff.  Behich was decent when he came on and provided some good moments but Belbalj was anonymous.  Any assessment of their fortunes will have to wait a month.