Goals flow for happy Emerton

He hasn’t found the back of the net too many times in recent years for club or country, but he picked the perfect time to get his scoring touch back with a two-goal haul against Qatar last night.

He hasn-t found the back of the net too many times in recent years for club or country, but he picked the perfect time to get his scoring touch back with a two-goal haul against Qatar last night.

Emerton, who has mainly been playing as an attacking right back, made the most of his move further up the field with a goal either side of half time, as the Socceroos secured their passage to the next phase of World Cup qualifiers.

On both occasions, Emerton was on the end several great moves, although the first was rather fortunate to find him in the 18th minute.

“Harry dummied it expertly for me,” he says with a hearty laugh. “He told me to say that.

“It was easy enough, if I had missed that opportunity I would have kicked myself and lucky enough it ended up in the back of the net.”

“For the second goal, Brett Holman played a great little ball over the top; I got a good first touch and I finished it off.

“It was a very important goal for us, because it pretty much killed the game off and allowed us to control the game from there really; I think the result was always going to be in our favour from there.”

Emerton is his earlier days was renowned for his attacking flair and made no secret of the fact that he enjoys being in a more forward role than he currently enjoys at right full back.

“I enjoy it; I-ve made no secret of that in the past,” he said after the match. “I enjoyed the opportunity to play there tonight and who knows in the future I might get to do it again.

While the conditions were different to the previous week in Dubai, Emerton believes the team coped very well with the heat, which contributed to the overall good performance, especially from the young players.

“Obviously it was still testing conditions and they are a good team to play against, but I think we scored the goals at important times in the game and that allowed us to pretty much control it.

“There are a lot of young boys that have come into the team and done exceptionally well and there are a lot of positives to take from the young boys performances out there tonight.”