Modbury Jets pulled off an upset 3-1 victory over Adelaide City to move off the bottom of the Playstation 4 National Premier League South Australia ladder on Saturday.

It was one of those days for City where nothing went right for them, and everything did for the Jets.

Anthony Costa had a buffet of chances laid out in front of him, but Modbury keeper Paul Reilly was like a brick wall in between the sticks, thwarting everything the home side threw at him; while midfielder Joe Costa headed straight to the tunnel with an injury only seconds after coming on.

The majority of the game was played inside Modbury’s defensive third, and the visitors never looked capable of crossing the halfway line.

When Modbury did enter the attacking third they grasped the opportunity with both hands, scoring three goals inside the first half leaving the home side stunned.

After moving down the right flank, the ball found its way to Kieran McNally on the edge of the box. The big striker worked his way toward the by-line, cutting the ball back across the face of goal to Rhys Devlin at the back post for an easy tap in.

Fabian Rinaldo gave the visitors a shock two goal lead, pouncing on a loose ball in the box after a one-two on the edge of City’s 18-yard box failed to materialize. The deflection found its way to Rinaldo, who slipped it past the lunging keeper Jackson O’Donnell.

McNally was rewarded for his earlier work in typical goal poacher fashion. A short corner was played to Darcy Clarke who launched a long range strike from outside the box; O’Donnell unable to properly collect, spilled into the path of McNally who made no mistake.

City kicked into another gear at the start of the second half with Anthony Costa breaking through the shaky Modbury defence and finishing into the top corner very early on.

But the visitors managed to hold for their first win of the season, and their first victory over City in the clubs history.

Modbury head Coach Jason Trimboli was ecstatic post-game after bagging the three points.

“It’s going to bleed some belief into the team and the club that we’re not here to make the numbers up, we can compete, we can cause some trouble.

“We still know there’s a long way to go and improvement that needs to be made; the last three weeks have shown that we’re around the mark, we’re getting better and improving.

“It’s taken a while for the new boys to blend in with the older boys, thinking that we were a state league team and not a premier league team; so moving on from here, hopefully the boys will have that belief.”

Adelaide City midfielder Nick Bucco said the team could only rue their missed chances.

“We conceded three sloppy goals but dominated for the majority of the game, especially after going behind; we were chasing the game and creating a lot of chances, but we just didn’t take our chances.

“We were punished for our mistakes and their keeper made some tremendous saves, the follow ups just didn’t fall for us a couple of times; but we’ve only got ourselves to blame and we have to keep fighting.

“We have to knuckle down as a team, look at each other and question where we want to be as a team in the next six weeks.”

Article by Brendan Simpkins