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Retro Corner – Glorious Glovemen Galore!

Jason Petkovic waves after 2003 GF

Who is your all-time favourite Glory goalkeeper?

As with all such questions, the answer will be influenced by a number of factors, notably your age, how long you’ve been following the club and just that intangible something which endears certain players to certain people.

What is beyond dispute, however, is that Glory has fared extremely well for ‘keepers over the years, a fact borne out by the sheer longevity of a number of them.

While no-one quite managed to monopolise the gloves during the club’s early years, the likes of Tommy Maras, Vince Matassa, Danny Milosevic, Tony Franken and Robbie Zabica all featuring at various times, that situation changed in 1999.

Enter Jason Petkovic.

Jason Petkovic beckoning

The man from Spearwood had already chalked up more than 150 NSL appearances for Adelaide City when he headed home and he was to become a key figure in the club’s most successful period to date.

In total, he made 177 appearances over the course of the next decade, picking up three NSL Premiership and two NSL Championship-winners’ medals along the way and for Glory fans of a certain vintage, “Petka” will forever be number one.

The early years of the A-League era, however, again saw the goalkeeping duties shared by a number of candidates, not least due to Petkovic briefly departing for a spell in Turkey and then sustaining an horrifically broken leg which threatened to end his career.

Tando Velaphi duly emerged as the favoured one from a pack which included the likes of Tommi Tomich and Aleks Vrteski, eventually making 74 appearances before moving on in 2011.

Tando Velaphi saving for Glory

And his departure heralded an era which would be dominated by two men; Danny “Rhino” Vukovic and Liam “Rocket” Reddy.

Vukovic celebrates against Heart

With 236 A-League appearances for Glory between them, the pair have featured in more than half of all the club’s entire total A-League games and each will have their backers for the all-time club number one spot.

Vukovic was, of course, a hugely influential figure in driving the club to its first A-League Grand Final in 2012, while Reddy was an ever-present in the Premiership-winning side of 2019 and who can forget his heroics in the penalty shootout against Adelaide United which sealed Glory’s second Grand Final appearance in the same year?

Glory v Adelaide - Liam Reddy pure emotion

So, after all that, who’s your favourite?

Are you passionate about Petka, bullish about the Rhino, or fired up for Rocket?

Or does one of our other ‘keepers float your boat?

Have your say on our Glory Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.

#OneGlory