A youthful Brisbane Roar side has kept the club’s unbeaten pre-season run in tact defeating a Brisbane Invitational XI 3-2 at Rochedale’s Underwood Park.
Goals to Reinaldo, Matt Thurtell and James Meyer proved enough to see off the best of the Brisbane Premier League-s young guns, who pushed the Roar all the way in the training match clash.
With Saturday-s pre-season friendly against Wellington Phoenix in Hamilton in mind, Brisbane head coach Ange Postecoglou used the match to cast his eye over some of the younger members of his first team squad and those returning from injury.
The news was good for two of those players with Shane Stefanutto and Milan Susak looking strong and sharp during the first half of the contest before being replaced at the break.
However the news wasn-t so good for left-sided midfielder Rocky Visconte, the 20 year-old suffering a re-occurrence of his hamstring injury after half an hour of the match despite all medical checks showing he was clear of the injury prior to the match.
Brazilian striker Reinaldo opened the scoring halfway through the opening stanza when he headed a Luke Brattan corner into the goal.
James Meyer doubled the lead midway through the second half when he lashed home a shot from the edge of the box before Matt Thurtell rounded out Brisbane-s scoring a short time later when he pounced on a loose ball in the box following a corner.
The 3-0 deficit did not deter the young Invitational side and, as they had done throughout the contest, took the match to their more fancied opponents.
Andrew Shepherd scored a brilliant solo goal with five minutes left in the match as he outpaced the Brisbane defence to slot under replacement goalkeeper Matt Acton.
Shepherd-s goal was overshadowed however by a cracking strike from Nick Waddell who smashed a dipping shot under the bar from outside the box with just about the last kick of the match.
