The End Of The Melbourne Derby Is Australia's Greatest Gift Since 'Land Down Under'

Over the years, Australia has gifted the world a plethora of cultural phenomena; Neighbours, Home and Away, Baz Luhrmann's 'Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen', Steve Irwin's 'The Crocodile Hunter', Kylie and Jason and, of course, 'Land Down Under' by Men At Work. Not too keen on all the massive spiders they have over there, though. Anyway, that rich tapestry of history has been well and truly knocked off it's perch by the finale of today's Melbourne derby between Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory.

If there's one thing that every football fan can agree on, it's that goalkeepers storming the opposition penalty area in the dying embers of a game in order to rescue a draw from the jaws of defeat is a form of batshit heroism that deserves applauding, whether it ends up paying off or failing miserably.

Often, what happens is the goalie flings themselves in the general direction of the ball when the set piece is swung in, whether they actually stand a chance of making contact with it or not. The ensuing scramble tends to generate a reaction of "Fuc..shi...ah...get...go...HIT...he's gonna...Ah piss!" as fans jerk around to see if the big mad bastard from between the sticks has actually managed to write themselves into last minute folklore.

The funnier alternative to this is when the goalie gets caught in no man's land and the opposition break to punish them in the most ruthless, hilarious manner possible.

The latter situation presented itself during the A-League clash between the two Melbourne clubs, today and it was a big, glorious, chaotic fucking mess.

City, trailing 2-1 in the EIGHTH (love a ridiculous amount of injury time) minute of added time, earned themselves a corner, for which goalkeeper Dean Bouzanis decided he fancied himself as a modern day Jimmy Glass.

Only, instead of burying a last gasp game saving strike, Bouzanis miscontrolled the ball on the edge of the area and, well, found himself more fucked than Arsenal's top four hopes.

Victory broke downfield, looking for all the money in the world that they were going to wrap up a 3-1 derby day victory.

Instead, midfielder James Troisi decided it'd be a laugh to inexplicably boot the ball wide from miles out instead of taking any extra touches or squaring the ball for his onrushing teammate.

Still can't decide whether to applaud Troisi's utter ineptitude in that situation, given how much it adds to the brilliance of the passage of play.

Topics: Football News, Football, A-League

Joe Baiamonte

Northerner. Assistant Editor of SPORTbible. Studied Journalism and Broadcasting in a portakabin on a car park of Salford University for three years. Believes football peaked with Serie A in the '90s and strong-arms pro wrestling references into as many articles as possible. Neymar once took 50 euros off me during a game of poker.

@JoeBaia