Brisbane Roar coach says it was his own team’s lack of conditioning that proved decisive in the Reds’ 2-1 win

Brisbane Roar coach John Aloisi believes it is a “myth” that Adelaide United are much fitter than other A-League sides, arguing it was his own team’s lack of conditioning that proved decisive in the Reds’ 2-1 win.

The visitors came from a goal down to seal a thrilling 2-1 comeback on Friday thanks to two strikes from Ryan Kitto and Johan Absalonsen in the last five minutes at Suncorp Stadium.

Much has been made of their newfound endurance after a pre-season under new fitness-focused coach Marco Kurz, who has introduced double sessions and is pushing for his team to soon train four times a day.

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They certainly had all the legs late in the match and Kurz said he could sense there was a chance to snatch victory from the tiring hosts after Kitto’s 88th-minute equaliser.



But Aloisi said the Reds do not have as much of a physical advantage as they would like to think. “Their fitness is a bit of a myth,” he said.

“They came home strong because we’ve got players who still aren’t at a level of fitness because we’ve had a disrupted pre-season. Of course they’re going to talk about their fitness because they ended up scoring two goals in the last five minutes.

“[Avraam] Papadopoulos, he hardly kicked the ball in pre-season. He’s not fit. Peter Skapetis hasn’t played football for two years on a regular basis. [Fahid Ben] Khalfallah has hardly trained.

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“We’re going to get better, we know that. At the moment there’s players that aren’t understanding each other as well as we’d like because they’re for the first time playing together. Fitness is just something they’re going to talk about ... maybe they do train four times a day, I don’t know, but I don’t believe they’re fitter than us.”

The Roar’s second straight defeat will do them no favours as they try to shake their ’Dad’s Army’ tag.

But at least Brisbane’s oldest player, Italian veteran Massimo Maccarone, broke his A-League duck by tucking home an excellent Corey Brown cross after just eight minutes. “We know he’s going to score goals – he played well, linked up well, held up the ball well. I thought they were having trouble with him defensively,” Aloisi said.

The Roar had ample chances to make it 2-0 but were repeatedly thwarted by Reds goalkeeper Paul Izzo, who made six important saves.

He also made what Kurz described as a “crazy” error when he gave away possession inside his own penalty box, but the 22-year-old recovered with a back-to-back effort to deny Nick D’Agostino twice just after half-time.

“That can be a turnaround in a game. [If] they score, maybe you lose,” Kurz said. “It’s a young goalkeeper, I think he makes mistakes in his career but after the error, he made two big saves and it’s good for us.”