Having smashed one Hyundai A-League hoodoo in recent weeks, Melbourne Victory is confident of dispensing with another when it travels to Perth to face the Glory on Sunday.
Having smashed one Hyundai A-League hoodoo in recent weeks, Melbourne Victory is confident of dispensing with another when it travels to Perth to face the Glory on Sunday.
Coming into the 2009/10 season, the Victory had only won once at both Newcastle and Perth with those two grounds clearly the two venues where the dual Hyundai A-League champions had produced their worst performances during the competition’s short history.
Indeed Melbourne has lost on its past four visits to Perth with its only win at Members’ Equity Stadium being back in Round 5 of the 2006/07 season.
However after recently smashing a similar hoodoo at Newcastle – with a 3-1 win a fortnight ago – Victory is confident of doing likewise this week against Perth with the team buoyed by five wins in its past six matches overall.
“We go over there with a lot of confidence because the recent results have been very good for the club,” midfielder Grant Brebner said following Wednesday’s training session at Monash University.
“But we know how difficult it is in Perth and we do look back to past games there and know they always give us a hard time and we are very aware of that.”
“It’s not been a happy hunting ground for us and there and Newcastle have probably been our toughest games but thankfully we managed to put Newcastle to bed recently and got a win over there and hopefully we can do the same this time in Perth.”
Victory defender Matthew Kemp agreed with Brebner and said only a performance at least equal to or it not better than last week’s stylish 3-1 home win over Adelaide would be good enough to beat Perth on Sunday night.
“We want to improve every time we play and that is what we will try and do this weekend,” he said.
“We broke the hoodoo we had at Newcastle so we are pretty confident we can the same in Perth this week given our recent form.”
But Kemp said the players could not afford to dwell too much on their recent performances in Perth ahead of Sunday’s important clash.
“I don-t think it plays on your mind but you know in the back of your mind you mightn’t have won somewhere for a while,” he said.
“But at the end of the day when you go out there you know it’s 11 v 11 so you put it out of your mind and get on with the game.”
