Shirt curse strikes again
With the news that Kaz Patafta will be playing for the Newcastle Jets next season I should seriously consider which player’s name I’ll be putting on the back of a Melbourne Victory shirt for the upcoming season. With Patafta’s departure it makes it the second season in a row where the person who appears on the back of my shirt has left the club. You could probably guess that I had put Fred on the back of my shirt during Season Two.
After impressing myself and a number of others during a pre-season game against Sydney I made the decision to put his name and number on my shirt for the 2007/08 season knowing full well that he was only on a one year loan deal but hoping that he would stay longer.
In the end we never got to see what Patafta was truly capable of through the combination of lack of game time and not fitting into Ernie Merrick’s game plan which resulted in a subsequent drop in confidence. In the latter stages of the campaign we did again see a glimpse of what he is capable of with a well taken goal against Wellington Phoenix.
The lack of opportunities for regular game time is most probably the reason why we have seen Kaz move on and we can hardly blame him for that fact. A player of his age needs regular game time and hopefully he gets more at Newcastle and shows us that there is reason behind the hype.
Farewell Kaz and thanks for the all too brief memories. I hope you score many goals in the upcoming season, just as long as they are not against Melbourne.
Tags: fred, kaz patafta, melbourne victory, newcastle jets
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:07 pm
maybe you should put merrick’s name on the back?