During his 141 career A-League appearances for Glory, Sydney FC and Melbourne City, Jamie Coyne scored five goals.
A pretty standard return for a defender of that era and a remarkably consistent one as the Perth local never scored more than once in a single season.
As rare as his goals were, however, a number of them were pretty memorable, including the one we’re focusing on in this edition of Retro Corner.
October 27th 2007 was the date, Sean Kingston was busy warbling about “Beautiful Girls”, “Rush Hour 3” was topping the box office charts and Geelong had just brought their 44-year wait for a Premiership to an end.
Glory, meanwhile, were making a less than spectacular start to their third A-League campaign.
Their opening nine games had yielded no wins and just six goals scored, so it’s fair to say that those of a purple persuasion were not exactly bouncing with anticipation ahead of a trip to Suncorp Stadium to take on a Queensland Roar side which had just hit some form via wins over Wellington and Central Coast and a draw against Newcastle.
And yet things could not have started any better in Brisbane, home skipper Craig Moore gifting the visitors the lead on 17 minutes when he inadvertently steered Billy Celeski’s low cross past Liam Reddy and into his own net.
Four minutes before the break, a first Glory win of the season started to look a serious possibility as Nikolai Topor-Stanley showed a great turn of pace to get away down the left and stand up an inviting cross for Jamie Harnwell who planted a firm, downward header beyond Reddy’s despairing dive.
Any notion that the men in white might be able to cruise their way to three points, however, was almost immediately dispelled when Brazilian import Marcinho took advantage of cheap turnover in midfield to rifle a shot past Tando Velaphi and halve the arrears on the stroke of half-time.
Suitably inspired, Roar drew level from the penalty spot in the 69th minute, substitute Simon Lynch ignoring Velpahi’s effort to distract him by pulling a bizarre front wedgie to fire home.
And Ron Smith’s men looked to be heading for yet another defeat when Lynch struck again with just four minutes left, the Scot being allowed way too much space in the box before placing a low shot past Velaphi.
But cometh the hour, cometh the Coyne.
After exchanging a neat one-two with Leo Bertos, the defender burst through to the edge of the box and pulled the trigger.
In fairness to Reddy, the low shot looked as if it may have taken a deflection off the boot of one of the Roar defenders, but either way, it flashed into the bottom corner, the vast majority of the 16,715-strong crowd were silenced and Glory had pulled a point out of the fire.
It would be nice to report that Coyne’s last-gasp leveller proved to be a watershed moment in Glory’s season, but unfortunately that was not the case.
A week later they lost at home to Wellington and that spelled the end of Ron Smith’s tenure as Head Coach and although Smith’s successor, Dave Mitchell, secured a 4-1 win at Newcastle in his first game in charge, Glory would go on to win just three of their remaining nine games en route to a seventh-place finish.
But let’s not end on a downer, shall we?
You can check out the goals from the draw with Roar HERE and if you still need an extra lift, Sean Kingston may be able to help HERE.
#OneGlory
