The 27-year-old has been versatile throughout his career, whether as a schoolboy at Sacred Heart College in Auckland, at Blackburn Rovers in England, in New Zealand’s old national league, where he played for Auckland City, Waitākere United, and Eastern Suburbs, or at the Phoenix. But it was only during the 2017-18 national league season, when he linked up with his old school coach – former All Whites centre back Danny Hay, now the national team coach – at Suburbs, that he first began to play week-in, week-out in the centre of defence, having predominantly been a midfielder – and sometimes a forward – beforehand.
Tomer Hemed opened the scoring for the Phoenix with a first half penalty.
Wellington Phoenix will return to Wellington on Monday, knowing that they will likely need to win all of their remaining four games in order to reach the A-League finals series after coughing up an early lead to draw 2-2 with leaders Melbourne City at AAMI Park on Sunday. The Phoenix opened the scoring through Israeli striker Tomer Hemed’s 37th minute penalty but relied on another Hemed goal with two minutes to play to salvage a point after City struck twice in the second half. A win would have moved the Phoenix to within just one point of the top-six, but instead they remain three points adrift of Brisbane Roar and Western Sydney Wanderers with four games remaining.
Tomer Hemed
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Even when the homeside went down to ten men with 16 minutes to play, the Phoenix were unable to capitalise.
The Phoenix remain in ninth place on the table, three points outside the play-offs, with Adelaide now second.
The Phoenix dominated the second half of the match, recording 12 goal attempts to the Red s five, but tight defence from both sides denied either of these typically high-scoring sides from registering a goal.
Coach Ufuk Talay made a number of changes to his side with Louis Fenton and Cameron Devlin both out due to suspension and Ben Waine benched in favour of Jaushua Sotirio.