Adelaide United 5 - Newcastle United 1

Joshua, Jordan and I enjoyed Adelaide United's first home game of the season - the game, that is, and not the weather.

The seats and stadium were already wet from the odd shower during the day. Five minutes before kickoff the rain bucketed down, sending us running for cover. When we got home I was soaked through to all but the undies! The rain however eased just before kickoff and we resumed our seats two rows above the playing surface at the southern end.

The trade off with the undercover seats of reserved seating is that with general admission seats you can sit where you like and get different angles each game. In this case, sitting at the southern end was great because we saw the majority of Adelaide's goals and also saw angles and perspectives you'd miss from the side or higher up.

Before recounting the game, I remark at the wonderful addition of the Club Financial Services video screen. Relaying FoxSports throughout the game, the screen is a very welcome addition - allowing you to follow highlights of goals, misses, tackles and other incidents - getting the crowd even further into the action.

OK - to the game. We were up 3 goals in the first 24 minutes, all during the rain but worth the soaking. There were so many goals I can't recall the order, but one was Shengqing Qu's brilliant free kick from the edge of the penalty box; another was Cornthwaite's deft header lifting over the 'keeper after Aloisi drove a great free kick into the bar. For me those were the two best goals of the evening. At the other end the next best was a fine run and pass from new Dutch import Bobby Petta - I'll talk about him in a minute - which set up Fernando Rech for his second goal of the evening. Our fifth goal belonged to Qu but would not have happened but for a communication howler from the Newcastle defender and 'keeper Kennedy - the goal is recorded as an own goal.

The best player for Adelaide, believe it or not, was in my view the 'keeper Robbie Bajic. The game was very open - an encouraging sign compared to last season's grinding 1-0, 2-0 wins - and Newcastle deserved to be about 5-3 in defeat. Bajic pulled off some excellent saves. At centre-back, Ange Costanzo played a solid first half and looked very composed in defence. The defence mucked about with the ball a bit more in the second half but overall was quite steady. Fernando, Qu and Owens all deserve mentions too, and I was impressed with Spagnuolo before his substitution - he looked better for the runs after the New Zealand pre-season match, making good runs and sensible decisions.

Newcastle's best were Nicky Carle and Tarek Elrich. I can not justify naming any of the Newcastle defenders, so some of the attackers deserve a mention. Carle looked dangerous whenever he got the ball in midfield, though two shots he blasted over the cross-bar stand against him glaringly. Tarek Elrich looked very dangerous running forward and exposed Adelaide for a lack of a pacy defender who can run with the faster players. With Cornthwaite and Costanzo in the centre of defence, all our defenders look big and lanky and not that fast. Alagich is probably the man for the job, but he was substituted for Owens after about 20 minutes - perhaps once coach Kosmina was comfortable that 3-0 up meant the luxury of resting Alagich. Travis Dodd looked good in parts too but didn't seem to be consistently threatening.

Newcastle 'keeper Kennedy deserves a mention because he had a howler of a game. Aside from the own goal, where he should have told his defender to leave the ball but he didnt, causing his slight touch on a spinning ball from a bustling Qu to slide past Kennedy and into the net. Kennedy's bronx-cheers raised even higher after this incident. Kennedy was maybe unlucky not to clear Cornthwaite's header for 2-0, but looked uncertain on his line.

I wanted to finish by talking about Bobby Petta. He took my breath away! He does not look fast and perhaps is unfit, but every touch oozes class. The little flick to his own advantage or setting up another player was in every play. Smart tackles when he appeared over-run put the ball back into Adelaide's favour. His runs into the box left defence heads spinning and brought others into play. With he and Spagnuolo firing on the wings, we won't miss Pantelis too much. I can't wait to see Petta, Qu and Fernando - our three imports, the Dutch-Chinese-Brazilian connection - things are looking much more rosy for us after two losses to Melbourne and New Zealand.