Wellington Phoenix are off the bottom of the A-League table, after beating Central Coast Mariners 3-1 in Wellington.<\/p>\n
Midfielder Corban Piper scored the first goal in the 31st minute, after Kasuki Nagasawa pounced on a poor pass from a Mariners defender.<\/p>\n
Nagasawa surged forward, finding an unmarked Piper, who neatly tucked away the opening goal.<\/p>\n
The Phoenix lead lasted until just before halftime, with the Mariners equalising through Sabit Ngor, after replacement goalkeeper Eamonn McCarron failed to cleanly stop a Miguel Di Pizio shot from long range.<\/p>\n
McCarron had come into the game, after starting goalkeeper Josh Oluwayemi left in the 11th minute, with an ankle injury.<\/p>\n
The Phoenix re-established themselves early in the second half, after video review ruled a Mariners handball inside the area, which Manjrekar James converted from the spot.<\/p>\n
A third goal followed three minutes later, courtesy of winger Carlo Armiento.<\/p>\n
The win is the third from nine matches this season for the Phoenix and moves them up to seventh place in the 12-team competition on 11 points, nine points behind leaders Auckland FC.<\/p>\n
The win, which was the biggest Phoenix home win since April last year, completes a solid weekend for the club, after their women’s team posted a record 7-0 win over Sydney FC yesterday.<\/p>\n
Both teams now break for Christmas, with their next matches just before the New Year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wellington Phoenix are off the bottom of the A-League table, after beating Central Coast Mariners 3-1 in Wellington. Midfielder Corban Piper scored the first goal in the 31st minute, after Kasuki Nagasawa pounced on a poor pass from a Mariners defender. Nagasawa surged forward, finding an unmarked Piper, who neatly tucked away the opening goal. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16111,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16109\/revisions\/16111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}