LIVE football commentary returns to Injury Time with the blockbuster Melbourne derby in the Hyundai A-League!

It’s Melbourne Heart up against two-time champions, Melbourne Victory!

Both Melbourne clubs come into the game on the back of impressive wins, with the Heart actually sitting one place above their more illustrious opponents in 4th.

The Heart have been steadily building up form and have been one of the real surprise packages this season, and if you can believe it, if they manage to conjure a win this evening, they’ll move up to outright second on the table. Meanwhile for the Victory, a little bit of pressure was eased last week when they dominated Wellington Phoenix 3-1 at home and if they manage another convincing win of three goals or more against the Heart, the two teams will currently switch spots in the ladder.

Over the past 12-16 months, the Melbourne derby has firmed as the most passionate and intense local rivalry in the league and with both teams currently playing well, let’s hope we get a stunner of a match tonight!

Coverage will begin at 7.45PM AEST, with Gordon D’Mello on hand to take you through all of the action!

You may remember that a few weeks and months back now, we showed you a bunch of rumoured pictures we thought would be the kits for all 10 teams this season. Today, we look back at those pictures and the actual confirmed kits. Did we get it right? How off were we? Only one way to find out!

Adelaide United

Rumoured Jersey

Actual Kit

 So quite a bit off with Adelaide! Different designer, different style. The only real thing we picked was the colours, but anyone could have picked them! In terms of the actual home and away kits, they’re not bad. Would have liked to see some more navy or yellow designs on the home kit though. But it is nice and simple.

Home Kit: 6.5/10
Away Kit: 7/10

Wellington Phoenix

Rumoured Jersey

Actual Kit

Pretty close on the Wellington kit, and it’s one of my favourite this season. It’s a great kit and suits them perfectly. The Adidas stripes down the sleeves add to a perfect home kit. The white away kit you see hear is currently one of the few unconfirmed jerseys, but it’s strongly been tipped as a real image.

Home Kit: 9.5/10
Away Kit: 7/10

Melbourne Victory

Rumoured Jersey

Actual Kit

 Again, pretty close on the Victory kit. The collar is a bit different, with the polo-esque style on the real jersey. Also the white channels down the sides. The away jersey looks nice, although it does frighteningly remind me of the referees kit. Overall two quite nice, quality kits.

Home Kit: 8/10
Away Kit: 7/10

Central Coast Mariners

Actual Kit

Rumoured Jersey

Half, half with CCM. Hummel are the new designers, and they’ve cut more yellow out of their home kit and thrown it to the alternative jersey. To be quite honest, I’m more of a fan of the Boca Juniors like away kit. Hummel don’t quite do it for me with the home jersey. I think the better kit would be if you took the away jersey and home shorts and infused them together! Keepers look like construction workers.

Home Kit: 5/10
Away Kit: 7/10

Sydney FC

Actual Kit

Rumoured Jersey

Few differences between the rumoured and actual kits here. The obvious changes include the collar, navy pin strips and full sky blue sleeves. It’s a stylish home and away kit for that matter though for Sydney. They’ve finally got rid of the white jersey which I never quite liked. The black and sky blue contrasts really well. The only thing missing from both kits is a little splash of orange. It’s in the club logo and even a subtle touch could be put in somewhere.

Home Kit: 7.5/10
Away Kit: 8/10

Newcastle Jets

Actual Kit

Rumoured Jersey

Quite spot on with the Newcastle kit. They’ve stuck with the Barcelona look, quite ambitious by an ambitious owner in Nathan Tinkler. The Jets have also gone with their Premier League namesakes home kit as their alternative. The unusual fact that the club have yet to do an promo shots of the jerseys means its hard to rate them, but if they look anything like these mock ups on the official website, they should look epic.

Home Kit: 8.5/10
Away Kit: 8/10

Brisbane Roar

Actual Kit

Rumoured Kit

Interesting from the Roar. Rumour was true in that they’ve ditched the maroon and gone more with the Dutch look. Some obvious difference between rumoured and real with the white strip. Not a bad home kit. Black kits are really catching on in the league and i like the contrasting orange and white on the away kit. The shorts though, wow. They slightly wreck the whole look in my opinion, surprised they don’t have alternative coloured shorts.

Home Kit: 6.5/10
Away Kit: 7.5/10

Gold Coast United

Actual Kit

Rumoured Jersey

Pretty different kits. Pretty uninspiring at that. Clean, but pretty boring as well. Feel like it’s one of those jerseys you can mock up in create a team on FIFA. In saying that though, the gold of the home kit is nice and goes well with the whole ‘Brazilian’ look. The white away kit though is weak for me, could have done better in my opinion! Black jersey on the left is the keepers jersey.

Home Kit: 6/10
Away Kit: 4/10

Perth Glory

Rumoured Jersey

Actual Kit

Nearly spot on with the Perth jersey. Apart from minor difference with the collar, the rest of the actual jersey mirrors the rumoured. Obviously things like the orange stripes on the sleeves are accentuated a tad, overall not to different from seasons past. Away jersey is also nice, paying homage to the heritage of the Glory.

Home Kit: 7/10
Away Kit: 7/10

Melbourne Heart

Actual Kit

Rumoured Jersey

No surprises with the Heart, think we all saw this one coming. No difference at all really between rumour and real. Likewise with the away kit. The big shock comes as the Heart have now become the first ever A-League team to have a third kit for an entire season. You can understand it too, every other club have been showing off their new strips, so the Heart needed to do something for their fans. How good is it? So, so. Not a huge fan of the grey, but perhaps it will look better once they’re playing in it.

Home Kit: 7/10
Away Kit: 6/10
Third Kit: 5/10

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What Do You Think?

So there we have it, all 10 teams in the Hyundai A-League and what most of them will wear this coming season. What do you think of the new designers? How do you think we did with the rumoured jerseys? And most importantly, who’s your tip for this season? Let us know in the comments section below!

Done deal... Kewell has finally agreed to return back to Australia.

Australian superstar Harry Kewell has put months of speculation to bed by agreeing to join A-League franchise Melbourne Victory on an incentive based deal.

During a press conference earlier today, Melbourne Victory Chief Executive, Anthony Di Pietro announced that Kewell had signed a thee year deal.

Di Pietro noted that the contract was an ‘unconditional’ one.

He also quashed the rumoured problems caused by the FFA, stating they were nothing but helpful.

“The FFA were excellent in assistance to all parties including us and the Kewell camp,” he said.

Meanwhile, Victory head coach Mehmet Dugandzic said that he was aiming to play Kewell in a role behind the strikers.

“I spoke to Harry and he’s confident to play wherever I put him,” he said.

Both Di Pietro and Dugandzic raised up the point that Harry’s main incentive in returning to Australia was to give something back to his home country and the sport.

Kewell will arrive at the Victory in September and the club are confident he will be right for the blockbuster first round clash with Sydney FC at Etihad Stadium on October 8th.

Reebok's been booted, are these kits much better?

The news fans have been waiting for finally came last year when it was revealed that Reebok would no longer be the mandatory manufacturer of A-League kits.

As can be seen above, those are the rumoured (and we stress rumoured!) jerseys for all 10 teams that will be participating in next season. Of course North Queensland have had their license stripped after failing to come up with enough funds to convince the FFA to let them stand.

So what are your thoughts on each jersey so far? Here’s mine, if that’s any type of consolation.

Adelaide United – Nice and simple for Adelaide, sticking to the traditional primarily red, the white classic Umbro collar also adds a classy touch. Nothing we really didn’t expect, but still looks great.

Wellington Phoenix – They probably had the best Reebok kit out of the lot and one doubts they will change much as can be seen here. The only real difference from this jersey and last season’s is the Adidas stripes.

Melbourne Victory – Was never a fan of the ‘huge V’ that went over the shoulders and all so nice to see a return to a smaller ‘V’. The addition of the second ‘v’ on the collar is lovely and the Adidas stripes add to a great jersey.

CC Mariners – Disappointing comes to mind. Looks like a W-League kit. Those Hummel arrows are the only real addition to last season’s jersey, and to make it worse – they look horrible.

Sydney FC – Classy jersey for the Sky Blues. They’ve reintroduced the navy blue sleeves which is a nice touch and compliments the Adidas stripes well. Would have liked to see a touch of orange back as well though.

Newcastle Jets – Don’t know how to feel about this one. I mean yes, blue and red are some of the primary colours that represent Newcastle, but if you’re going to choose the Barca colours, you better be able to play.

Brisbane Roar – Probably the jersey with the least happening on it, but that aint always a bad thing. I like that the maroon bits are gone – they were never good – the charcoal colour suits them much better.

Gold Coast United – Never knew the Parramatta Eels played in the A-League? This doesn’t even warrant to be a football jersey. They’ve just added a blue strip down the sides to last season’s top. It’s simple, yet boring. I guess it’ll suit their style of play.

Perth Glory – Not a horrible jersey. Stuck to their now traditional purple/white stripes and the gold strips on the sleeves go well considering their emblem. Not too different to last season though.

Melbourne Heart – Don’t think this has been changed one bit from last season, but when you consider 2011/12 will only be their second season, no real surprise.

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below!

Champions!!! Brisbane Roar lift a very deserved 2010/11 A-League Trophy.

After arguably the best A-League season to date, the Brisbane Roar defined their remarkable streak of now 28 games undefeated by coming from two goals down in extra time to defeat Central Coast Mariners on penalties in the best A-League Grand Final ever.

Suncorp Stadium was packed to the rafters, with over 50,000 excited fans turning the stadium into a cauldron. Whilst many of those supporters were wearing orange, the Mariners also brought with them a very healthy legion of fans.

The result also marked the first time two consecutive A-League Grand Finals were decided beyond normal time.

It was a deserved win for the Roar, after all the emotion with the floods and it showed in the players’ performance throughout the season.

However, Central Coast will be struggling to find reasons as to how they lost the game, leading 2-0 with barely minutes to play in extra time.

In regular time, the Mariners were rock solid in defence with keeper and Joe Marston medallist, Matt Ryan, producing an array of stunning saves to keep the premiers at bay.

The 18-year old became the youngest ever keeper to play an Australian Football final and a fully deserved winner of the prestigious player of the Grand Final medal.

With eight shots on goal to two by full time, one wondered if Brisbane’s surprising inability to finish their chances would come back to bite them.

It so nearly did.

First Adam Kwasnik and then Oliver Bozanic struck to put the Mariners in the unbelievable position of leading 2-0 against the premiers in extra time with 15 minutes left.

That stat lasted til the 117^th minute when Henrique hit back to give a spark of hope to Brisbane.

And in the final minute of play, midfielder Eric Paartalu headed home the equalizer to send the home fans into raptures.

It was then former Melbourne Victory stopper, Michael Theoklitos who pulled of two amazing saves to allow Henrique to step in and seal the game at 4-2 in the shootout.

Roar skipper Matt McKay paid tribute to his team’s character, but the keeper praised his captain’s belief even at 2-0 down.

“Matty McKay pulled us together and said ‘there’s 15 minutes to go, how many times have we scored two goals in the last 15 minutes?’,” Theoklitos said.

It brought to an end a fantastic final and season.

We certainly cannot wait til the next one.

See you in August!