Sydney FC’s new home Jubilee Stadium proves a hit, pity they lost to oldest rivals Melbourne Victory

As the sunlight bathed a capacity crowd at their new home-from-home, it was almost the perfect day for Sydney FC — aside from the fact they lost to their oldest rivals.

Sydney FC supporters at WIN Jubilee Stadium.

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As the sunlight bathed a capacity crowd at their new home-from-home, it could have been a perfect day for Sydney FC – until their oldest rivals stole away with the points in the Big Blue.

Keisuke Honda’s second-half penalty proved enough for the champions to climb above Sydney on the table into second place, Kevin Muscat’s side executing a well-judged heist that was their third win in a row.

Keisuke Honda starred for the Victory.

The Sky Blues, by contrast, were left frustrated by a performance of promise but not enough potency. For all the home side probed Victory’s defence, they hardly threatened the goal often enough, and coach Steve Corica confirmed afterwards that signing another striker in January will be a priority.

“We’ve already started looking and there’s a few options,” Corica said. “With Trent Buhagiar out injured, he was a big threat with his pace. If we can find someone like that it would be great, otherwise we’ll have to look for something else.

“Still I thought we were the better side here and dominated, especially in the first half. But we made a couple of bad mistakes and got punished. You can’t afford to do that. But I’m proud of the effort.”

It’s far too early for season-defining judgments, of course. For long swathes more of a chess challenge than an arm wrestle, there was still plenty to engage a crowd of 19081, thoroughly endorsing Sydney’s decision to play the bulk of their home games in Kogarah while Allianz Stadium is rebuilt.

The vast majority would surely want to return, despite the result, thanks to an event that suggests Sydney could make their displacement from Allianz relatively painless.

But that also depends on how they perform, and this was a bad day to produce their first goalless return of the season.

Jubilee Stadium proved a hit with Sydney FC supporters.

Victory gave a starting debut to the Swedish international Ola Toivonen, rewarded with a goal in the 24th minute, and though their forward play is still a work in progress, Honda proved the difference.

It was the Japanese international who drew a horribly cumbersome foul from Jop van der Linden in the 70th minute, and Honda who carefully placed the resultant penalty into the bottom corner for his third goal of the season.

If the winner came largely against the second half run of play, Sydney must ask questions of how they can turn territorial advantage into more goalscoring chances.

Victory keeper Lawrence Thomas beat away a header from Rhyan Grant, and actually saved Adam Le Fondre’s penalty before being beaten to the rebound, but beyond that he was hardly tested.

Defensively Sydney have one video nasty to analyse, an aberration that eventually cost them the game. Victory centreback Georg Niedermeier won the ball adroitly in his own half on 24 minutes and fed Terry Antonis, who moved the ball quickly to James Troisi.

The fringe Socceroo’s ball inside was towards Kosta Barbarouses, sparking both Michael Zullo and Jop van der Linden to come across and cover – the problem was that when the ball bypassed them all, Toivonen had been left all alone to gather it and sweep home.

Sydney needed a response, but Victory were methodical in neutralising the Sky Blue forays forward.

In the end it was an extremely soft refereeing call that gave Sydney an avenue back into the contest. As the ball was worked around the Victory box, Milos Ninkovic rolled it into the path of Paulo Retre – whose path was partially impeded by Antonis.

It was a debatable call to put it mildly, but Le Fondre cared little, sidefooting home after Thomas’s initial save.

By the time they were behind again, Sydney could find no way back, and really mustered little in the way of a head of steam as Victory wound down the clock.

MELBOURNE VICTORY 2 (Ola Toivonen 23m, Keisuke Honda 71m pen) bt SYDNEY FC 1 (Adam Le Fondre 35m)at Jubilee Oval. Crowd: 19,081. Referee: Peter Green.

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