By Greg Blake
This Thursday Anthony Lesiotis will celebrate his birthday. A day later the now 25 year-old will stride out under the solemn autumn moon of Anzac Day with his eager, expectant Heidelberg United teammates. Catalina Street is the amphitheatre. The irrepressible Avondale a worthy opponent. It’s the biggest damned game of the season.
Instrumental in Alexander’s 2025 rise back to contender status, Lesiotis is also the only survivor – playing this week, that is – of probably the bleakest day in recent club history. Lesiotis was just 22 and a newcomer when Sean Ellis scored in the drizzling rain to put the Warriors a goal up at Avondale on April 15, 2023.
The Avengers got back on terms and then accelerated away to an 8-2 victory. Alexander was humbled and humiliated. The subsequent rebuild has been brutally rapid. Lesiotis was a kid in a team featuring eight players aged between 29 and 32 back then. At 25 Lesiotis is now part of a senior leadership group, alongside skipper Ben Collins (25), Jamal Ali (26), Yaren Sozer (just turned 28) and Mo Aidara, who is ageless but playing like a yearling.
Alongside is a posse of young, dynamic and hungry kids, each playing with unbridled joy and boundless enthusiasm. Heidelberg’s department of youth has yet to learn its limitations. Max Bisotto is a mere 20 years young. The likes of Fulton, Juach, McGowan, Markovic, Lethlien, McGowan Yokokawa and Ngor bring in an average age of around 23. The whole being greater than the sum of its parts is very much the team ethic.
This young Warrior’s season of promise first developed a cult following which is now rapidly becoming mainstream narrative. But the romance of Heidelberg’s classy winning streak – now extended to six following the cup game at St Albans – eventually demands consummation. A scalp of significance, if you will.
The visit of Avondale is massive. “Just another game”, is the mandatory coaching script. They know better. So do the players players, as do the fans. It won’t make or break the season, but big performances in big games have implications beyond the scoreboard. Sustaining the subtleties of confidence and momentum is the longer game.
The Avengers have little to prove. The numbers tell the story. Of 111 league games from 2021through to round ten this season they lost just 17 and were held scoreless just a dozen times in that same period. Back to scoring an average of three goals per game, it’s staggering that Zoran Markovski’s team isn’t bigger box office.
That said, since that dark day in April, 2023, Alexander has played Avondale four times since, beating them 1-0 in the cup that same year and playing out 1-1, 0-0 and 1-1 draws in subsequent league clashes. That 1-3-0 record is pretty handy.
Better still considering that in the same period Avondale hasn’t bettered Alexander, Avondale has beaten every other side in NPL1, mostly more than once. They’ve knocked St Albans over five times, Port and Hume on four occasions, both Dandenongs, South Melbourne, Oakleigh and Magic three times each.
History aside, John Anastasiadis has current Warrior stocks heading rapidly north. Blending a patient structure with an often unpredictably wild, sweeping and blisteringly quick fast-break transition, Heidelberg has posted wins on the back of numbers every bit the equal of the Avengers. And it’s simply marvellous to watch.
If anyone had any sense this would be a stand-alone game and not lost in the morass of half-a-dozen NPL 1 games scheduled for Anzac Day evening. Both sides approach the game as it ought to be played and given Avondale and Heidelberg are statistically ranked first and second respectively in scoring final quarter hour goals, expect a 90-minute thumper on Friday night.
Some games simply cannot come around quickly enough. This is one of them. Warrior Nation.
