Bottom two produce top effort as Riverside bag first points of season

With both teams having suffered four losses from their opening four matches, the battle of the bottom two proved much more entertaining than their ladder positions would suggest.

Launceston soccer supporters again showed their appetite for Friday night derby encounters with another big turnout and no shortage of Birch Avenue regulars encircling Windsor Park.

Olympic coach Helder Dos Santos Silva was understandably delighted with the result.

"I'm extremely happy for them," he said of his players. "They really deserve this. They work really hard and the results haven't come our way.

"When you have two heavy defeats and one player sent off, players' morale will go down but they kept working really hard and all the praise goes to them because they were amazing, they were fantastic."

For the third time in five games, United claimed an early lead but their night went downhill from there and ended with prized import Ayouba Kenneh collecting his second red card of the campaign and earning another suspension for a needless second yellow in stoppage time.

Fellow import Malik Smith walked the ball home after just six minutes following an uncharacteristic mistake by home keeper Dan Nash.

A contest which saw former Launceston City goalkeepers at both ends kept Noah Curtis the busier of the two but he could do little about Olympic's comeback.

Austin Marshall tapped in from close range on the half hour following excellent work down the left from Will Prince and Henry Cook put the hosts in front just before the break with a well-judged looping header from Gedi Krusa's cross.

Marshall kept cool to grab his second on 52 minutes when left clean through after Emanuel Ponce appeared to be taken out and Krusa wrapped up the scoring from the penalty spot 20 minutes later after a skillful turn had drawn a foul from Luke Warrener.

Although Curtis denied Ponce a fifth late on, there was more than enough for the Windsor Park drummer to bang on about.

"We focused on transitions and width because we thought we could get at their full-backs," Dos Santos Silva added.

"United are not a bad side - they have really good players and a really good manager and we knew we had to take this seriously and congratulations to my boys because they deserved it."

Both teams went into the match looking for their first points of the season. Since losing their season-opener 9-0 to Glenorchy, United took a 4-0 lead only to go down 6-4 to champions Devonport and have since lost to South Hobart (1-3) and Clarence (1-6).

Olympic suffered 8-1 maulings at Kingborough and Glenorchy plus home losses to Launceston City (0-3) and Devonport (1-5).

The same two teams meet at the same venue in the Women's Super League at 2.15pm on Saturday when Riverside captain Meg Connolly will make her 100^th appearance for the West Tamar club.

Devonport also host South Hobart at 12.15pm and then at 2:30pm in NPL Tasmania with Launceston City also welcoming Clarence to Prospect Park at 4.45pm.