Central Coast legends Daniel McBreen, Matt Simon, Josh Rose and Lawrie McKinna reflect on the Mariners’ heartbreaking 2011 Grand Final defeat to Brisbane Roar in the upcoming KEEPUP special: ‘Making of the Mariners’
Brisbane Roar’s victory over Coast Mariners in the 2011 Grand Final is remembered by many as one of, if not, the greatest A-Leagues Grand Final of all time.
Ange Postecoglou’s side fought back from 2-0 down in extra time, scoring two goals in the 117th and 120th minute to send the game to penalties – before completing the comeback in the resulting shootout to secure their first ever Championship.
And while it was an unforgettable evening for all associated with Brisbane, it was the same for Mariners fans, just for all the wrong reasons.
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For the third time in six years, the Mariners had fallen just short in the decider, with the loss to Brisbane the latest in a catalogue of heartbreaking Grand Final defeats.
In 2006, they lost 1-0 to Sydney FC and two years later they narrowly fell by the same scoreline against arch-rivals Newcastle Jets, but on this occasion, the Championship was proverbially in their hands.
“It was devastating,” Mariners legend Daniel McBreen said on KEEPUP studios’ upcoming special – Making of the Mariners.
“I hate this and I know it’s probably true, but when people say that as a neutral, that’s the best Grand Final to watch because it was so exciting and the way it panned out.
“Brisbane on the balance of play throughout the season, you probably go ‘they deserve to be champions as well’ because they were phenomenal that year, but the way they got it.”
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McBreen’s former teammate Matt Simon responded: “I still haven’t watched it.”
“Yeah, I’ve never watched it,” ex-Mariners full-back Josh Rose also said.
“I’ve never watched any of my Grand Finals either,” inaugural Mariners coach Lawrie McKinna said.
“But even that (game), when I was there as an employee and a fan and it was heartbreaking. I felt the same way as I did after being the coach… because it was so close.”
Ahead of Central Coast’s clash with Melbourne City in the big dance on June 3, the Mariners legends are together to discuss the club’s journey over the best part of two decades.
All four were involved in the 2011 decider in some shape or form.
Simon and Rose started the game, with the latter playing the full 120 minutes, while McBreen replaced the former after 72 minutes. McKinna, who was the club’s inaugural head coach, had moved into a new role as Football and Commercial Operations Manager with Graham Arnold taking his place in the hot seat.
They all witnessed the unthinkable unfold before their very eyes.
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After a gruelling 90 minutes at Suncorp Stadium, the game went to extra time and the Mariners came out of the blocks the stronger of the two teams. Central Coast took a two-goal lead in the first period through Adam Kwasnik and Oliver Bozanic.
For all money, it looked as if the visitors were home and finally that elusive Championship was coming with them back to Gosford.
“We were two-nil (up), but also just so comfortable,” Rose recalled.
“(It) could have been three-four, we were just absolutely running over the top of them.”
However, with three minutes to go, everything changed.
Substitute Henrique pulled one back for Brisbane to set up a grandstand finish, before Erik Paartalu rose highest among a sea of players to nod home the equaliser with only seconds to go – sending the Grand Final to a dramatic penalty shootout.
“I remember Nik Mrdja’s story,” McBreen said.
“He was up in the box and there was five minutes to go and he knew it was going to take a while to get down on the lift, so he got in the lift, went down and he was in the box. He said he was there, going like that (taunting) to all the Brisbane supporters.
“By the time he got to the bottom, all the Brisbane fans were going nuts and he goes: ‘oh, they’re going nuts, they’ve scored a goal, there’s no time left’ and then he realised, oh no they’ve scored two goals.”
“It was the same with Bob Graham (politician)” McKinna said.
“I gave Bob Graham a pass to go on the park, going on to get the trophy and walk about the park. He got down there and it was two-all.”
In the lead up to Paartalu’s header, Pedj Bojic was bumped off the ball by Rocky Visconte and referee Matthew Breeze waved play-on despite the Mariners full-back going to ground.
Visconte’s cross was cleared by McBreen for a corner, which in the end, led to the Roar midfielder rising highest to score one of the most famous goals in A-Leagues history.
“Still to this day, I think Pedj was fouled and I should have cleared the ball out not for a corner but for a throw in,” McBreen said.
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“(Michael) Theo had the ball in his hands, he could have just launched it, and it would have been game over, but he rolled it out because they played football, Pedj got fouled and Breezy (Matthew Breeze) didn’t want to call that foul,” Simon responded.
“You (McBreen) didn’t use your right foot to hook it back the other way and then Patrick Patrick’s (Zwaanswijk) he didn’t pick him (Paartalu) up.
“If there was one certainty all year that if Patrick was marking someone in the box, he would never get beat.”
After both teams scored their first two penalties, McBreen and Pedj Bojic had their spot kicks saved by Michael Theo, while Matt McKay and Henrique slotted theirs to complete the unthinkable.
“I remember sitting there on the bench in extra time thinking: ‘how good is it going to be in Gosford rocking up off the bus and everyone being there’, picturing it all and for it to go down like that,” Simon said.
“On the bus on the way home, we were having a beer in the back and Arnie (Graham Arnold) came down and we are sitting there having a beer. Honestly, we would just rather lose 6-0, get absolutely battered and just say: ‘oh, well, we just got outplayed’
“It was good to play in the Grand Final but to lose it like that, the game is just never over, but 99% of the time you’ve won that Grand Final and credit to them, they never gave up.”
“Ever since that day, when someone says two-nil is a dangerous score line, I can say we know,” McBreen said.
“I think we stayed at the pub for about four days, and most of us didn’t see our family because we’re not going to be nice people to be around, just in the manner that we lost it but then we had to pick ourselves up.
“It was a bit of a long off-season there because you’re just like: ‘well, we want to get back into it, just get it out of the way and forget about it.”
The heartbreaking Grand Final loss capped off Rose’s first full season in the Isuzu UTE A-League, after signing for the club from Romanian side Universitatea Craiova.
Rose spoke about appreciating being there on the big day, but said it really hit home once he saw how devastated the likes of John Hutchinson and Alex Wilkinson were after falling short for a third straight time.
“For me coming back, it was a massive chance for me to prove myself in Australia, so I felt I had a quite a good first year,” he said.
“I was sitting by myself in Brisbane watching the grand final the year before in a pub because we didn’t have Fox at home, so I went and watched it by myself and I’m just thinking to myself: ‘how good would it be to play in one of them?’
“12 months later I was there, So I think my thinking of that day, was I’m so grateful to be there in the week leading up, but you’ve got people like Hutch (Hutchinson) and Wilko (Wilkinson) who had lost two already.
“After the game I was gutted with how it went down and everything, but it’s just the gratefulness of being able to celebrate being there for the week and the day, but then you look at Hutch and Wilko and the disappointment of losing another one.”
The following season the Mariners won the Premier’s Plate, but ran into familiar foes Brisbane in the Semi Finals – who knocked them off 5-2 on aggregate – before falling on penalties again in the Preliminary Final to eventual runners-up Perth Glory at home.
“We gave everything,” Rose said.
“We were in the Asian Champions League (ACL) as well and I think speaking to Arnie now, even he looks back to that year, and he said he tried to win everything. So he tried to win the Premiership.
“He tried to get us through in ACL, he wanted to win the grand final, and he was just playing that strong team over and over and over.
“We eventually limped over to the Premier’s Plate… beating Wellington in the last game over there, and Roar were coming hard at us. They sort of steamrolled us in the home and away Semi Final and then we just didn’t have enough to get through Perth.”
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Despite finishing above them and actually beating the Roar in the regular season, McBreen felt Brisbane still had the edge over the Mariners the following campaign.
McKinna subscribed to the same belief, believing they were a “bogey” team even in the years prior to the 2011 decider.
“In my five years as coach, Brisbane were a bogey team as well,” he said.
“When I went to Newcastle as CEO, it was the opposite. You just couldn’t work it out. It was always that bogey team.”
In McBreen’s eyes, it took until the following season – after Postecoglou departed for Melbourne Victory – that they were finally able to get a leg up on them.
And little did they know, a pre-season victory on the road against Brisbane, would help kick-start their road to a maiden Championship, which they secured in a 2-0 victory over the Western Sydney Wanderers at the end of that very campaign.
“I talk about this year, the Mariners against Adelaide every time that they’ve played Adelaide, the Mariners this year I’ve gone: ‘they’ve got the wood on them’,” he said.
“Whether it was a subconscious thing or not, Brisbane had that on us. If we were to get a draw against them, it felt like we’d given everything because they just seemed to be the team that we just couldn’t break for some reason.”
“We played them in pre-season game up there and Arnie had changed a couple of little ways we were going to play.
“Sains (Trent Sainsbury) was coming into his own, Matty Ryan had been around a few years now, Mile Sterjovski had come in, Mitch Duke, Bernie Ibini. All of a sudden you had players going: ‘that’s not your position’, there’s someone fighting you for your position.
“We only beat them 1-0, but we absolutely battered them and we got on the bus after, you and I (McBreen and Rose) sat down next to each other and went: ‘we’ve got them now’ and that for me was a seminal moment in the season.
“They’ve been our bogey team, the one team that stopped us getting to where we should be, where we think we should be and we feel now that we can get past them.
“Little did we know there was this little club down the road that was going to start up called the Western Sydney Wanderers and push us all the way to the end because we thought it’d be us in Brisbane.
“Western Sydney came in and we had a few ding dongs with them in that season as well!”
