Ryan Keir scores match winner to continue Canberra Croatia's undefeated NPL men's reign

A winless side was about to claim one point against the ladder leaders.

Enter Ryan Keir. He shattered that thought and delivered the match-winner for Canberra Croatia FC in the 91^st minute.

The 2-1 win over West Canberra Wanderers on Saturday extends the side's undefeated season out to seven games, leaving Woden still searching for its first three-point performance.

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The scores were locked 0-0 at Melrose Synthetic heading into the sheds, before the visitors charged out in the second half to show why they have not lost a game.

It took Croatia three minutes from the second whistle to break the deadlock and open the scoring.

Midfielder Matej Busek picked the ball up off a deflection and chipped it through for Hristijan Tanoski to hammer home from a tight angle.

Croatia coach Dean Ugrinic said his side knew what it needed to do in the second half.

"We needed to be a little bit better in our execution in the front third," he said.

"I thought that we controlled pretty much all of the game in the first half and we just lacked that cutting edge, that final path and potentially the right decision-making in the front third.

"We resolved that to some extent and then we scored, but the problem was that the momentum had stopped because we were forced to make a couple more changes due to injury. So that may have shifted the balance of play back to back to Woden."

Wanderers responded in the 61^st minute with an equaliser. A cross was cleared, then returned to the box, before a shot was fired, saved and pushed into the feet of Jenno Franco Ceruti to make it 1-1.

It was another 30 minutes before the match-winner to break the deadlock was scored by Deakin.

Daniel Barac added a winning assist to his name, taking the ball to the goal line and crossing it to Keir's head at the back post to make it 2-1.

Ugrinic said he never doubted his side's ability to take three points from the match but he did breathe a sigh of relief when the second went in.

"In the end, I always felt that we were the better team for most of it," he said.

"You never lose confidence in the players when we've got the list that we've got it. When you're bringing quality players on like Ryan Keir and Stephen Domenici, who despite being busted and unable to train, they're able just to provide that little bit of quality.

"The one thing that we do have this year is there's a resilience about them, a 'Never say die' attitude. They'll play to the final whistle."

NPLM:

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