DENNIS GEDLING blogs on the A-League for BPL. You can blog too. Click here for details.

Ever had some things in life you never thought would happen actually happen? For me it was seeing the usually hapless Geelong win an AFL premiership, seeing Neil Young play live and going to a family wedding where there wasn't a punch up. One more to add to the list now is Perth Glory coach David Mitchell actually tinkering with a formation and thinking outside of the box for a Glory match, amazing I know!

Not many of us Glory fans had much hope for the match last Saturday. We've basically been tied up in the basement of Melbourne Victory and routinely sodomised with a rolled up copy of Robbie Slater's autobiography The Hard Way every time we've headed over to the city that sun forgot to play them. We'd done okay initially with two 2-2 draws in the first A-League season but since then it has turned in to a horror story. 1 draw, 4 losses, 3 goals for, 13 goals against including 4-0 and 6-2 thrashings. This game was one that wasn't being marked down as three or even one pointer Glory. The central defence for Glory looked shambolic at best in the previous match. The poorer of the Coynes (Jamie) and Jamie Harnwell (Glory's answer to Boxer from Orwell's Animal Farm) looked very shaky against the Fury so a clean sheet wasn't really expected. You also had Tando Velpahi in goal, his flapping for some corners and free kicks giving Glory fans simultaneous aneurysms for a good few years now.

Doom and gloom was forecast but this is where the normally inflexible and sometimes ignorant Mitchell finally did something. Mitchell has never really been accepted by the fans. It may have been because his young and quite decent Sydney United side (featuring current Glory players Sterjovski and Burns) knocked Glory out of their first finals series in the NSL in 1999. It might be the fact that his dodgy facial hair and cheap tracksuit when assistant coach to Ron Smith. Yet, Glory went in to the match with a 4-5-1 formation to nullify the Victory, a move that should have been made in other matches against the Victorians but usually ignored.

The striker Branko Jelic was on the bench and Perth raised winger Todd Howath was put out on the left. Mile Sterjovski was finally switched to the right and played a fantastic match with able support from Scott Neville which finished with very well taken goal, perhaps we'd finally found the right fit for the former Socceroo. Robbie Fowler's corners were also something to behold, one of them resulting in the opening goal for Harnwell. Velpahi made some brilliant saves and ruled his six yard box like a brutal dictator which all resulted in a fantastic 2-0 win. Only the second clean sheet for Glory in Melbourne in the A-League and while some Victory fans will claim that a lack of firepower up front contributed to the win you can't escape the fact Glory are looking half decent.

Perhaps this could be a Feng Shui thing? The two times we drew 2-2 in the first season we were playing the Victory at Olympic Park and this match was played at the new bubble stadium AAMI Park. Perhaps Etihad Stadium was some kind of bad luck vortex for the Glory? Perhaps a gypsy from the suburb of Sunshine in the West of Melbourne had laid a curse on the Glory before our first game there? Who knows, who cares, we won last weekend, we finally put the Victory back in its place away from home and it feels weird but it feels good.

Now, on to the match against Newcastle at NIB Stadium tomorrow. It should be a good welcome home for some of the old Glory boys from the side's ‘Golden Era' who now play for the Jets, it's just a shame that the two players weren't really golden in that time. Ljubo Milicevic had talent to burn but had the work ethic of Corey Worthington and a face like a Picasso painting. Former Olyroo Kasey Wehrman came to Glory with much fanfare from the Brisbane Strikers but didn't really do much apart from a brilliant free kick against Parramatta Power in Sydney one time and getting sent off every second match in his first season for the club.

Despite the fact the Jets have been played off the pitch most times they've come here (they were butchered twice by the Glory last season over in WA) they have a fantastic, if not charismatic, coach in Branko Culina and the brilliant youngster Ben Kantarovski could open up our defence. You couldn't write them off possibly doing to us what we did to the Victory last weekend but hopefully Mitchell and his new offsider Ian Ferguson now have the boys on a roll and top spot will be ours again at the end of Round 3.