Ironic, sure but Adelaide United has fate in own hands, writes John Kosmina

SPORT, as in life, at times, offers strange ironies ... or synchronicities. Two Adelaide brothers, Ross and John Aloisi, may well have contrived to give Adelaide United its best shot at the A-League championship.

Brisbane Roar training at Griffith University Mount Gravatt Campus. Ross and John Aloisi, Assistant and Coach. Pic Jono Searle.

SPORT, as in life, at times, offers strange ironies ... or synchronicities.

Two Adelaide brothers, Ross and John Aloisi, may well have contrived to give Adelaide United its best ever shot at the championship after their Brisbane Roar side showed great resilience to knock United’s grand final bogey side, Melbourne Victory, out of contention.

Ironic? You bet. Last week, the Roar couldn’t score against a second-string Victory and handed the Reds the Premier’s Plate, on a plate.

On Friday, by surviving a rampant first-half performance from Victory and going on go win in the dying seconds, Brisbane has given Adelaide an ostensibly easier passage to the grand final in two weeks.

Had Victory won, as the lowest-ranked finalist, it would have played Adelaide at Coopers next week. On form, I’d much rather be playing Melbourne City or Perth, which faces off this afternoon, with the winner coming to Coopers next Friday. It doesn’t matter which team gets through because the Reds have good form against both.

The stars certainly seem to be aligning for United. Tempting fate — maybe, but Guillermo Amor has his team ticking over so well that fate could be taken out of the equation.

If anything, United is fated to lift the trophy that many affectionately liken to a toilet seat at what I presume will be Adelaide Oval in a fortnight.

Ross and John Aloisi at Roar training. Photo: Jono Searle.

I don’t really care what the trophy looks like as long as Adelaide wins it. It’s long overdue and would be a fitting reward for the way it has gone about business this season.

Some long overdue changes in management personnel this season have, after a rocky transition period, precipitated a change in culture in the team and the club in general and the outcome is there for all to see.

And in what would be another strange irony, wouldn’t it be great for a “real football” team to lift a trophy at a venue that was built with no real consideration for the world game in mind — apart from the odd fixture to help pay the bills.

So United has its destiny firmly in its own hands, as it did last week when it tactically and technically outsmarted City. It had a workable and proper plan and stuck to it, taking hold of the game early and never letting go.

But there’s more to its game than just football, as I alluded to last weekend, when I mentioned the Reds’ sense of “team”.

Marcello Carrusca talked publicly this week about the bond of friendship that exists within the group at the moment and it’s this, probably more so than anything else, that has brought the club to the position it is now in.

It’s that almost ethereal quality that is the hallmark of great teams, but is really difficult to achieve, that underpins United’s success to date.

You can see it in the way the Reds play, as a unit and particularly in the way they celebrate — as a unit, with and for each other.

And so it is that United has now the best opportunity of its existence to do something really special — the double.

In what would be the final irony, should United progress next week and Brisbane roll the Wanderers, we would see the return to Adelaide of the Aloisi brothers. Ross, in particular, was the club’s first A-league captain and led the team to that infamous grand final of 2006-07. As I said, the tumblers are turning.