Match details
Melbourne Victory v Perth Glory
AAMI Park, Melbourne
Saturday, February 19, 2022
Kick-off: 4.50pm AEDT
Live on Paramount+
Preview
Melbourne Victory can secure a place in the Liberty A-League Finals Series with a win over Perth Glory on Saturday.
Victory hosts Perth at AAMI Park in what will be its fifth game in 16 days amid a busy run of fixtures.
The defending champion is coming off a dramatic 2-2 draw with Sydney FC on Wednesday that moved it back into third place on the table.
A win over Perth would secure Victory’s place in the top four at the end of the regular season.
Lia Privitelli sparked Victory’s comeback against the Sky Blues with her energy, and the attacker scored after coming on at half-time.
Catherine Zimmerman scored the equaliser in additional time with an excellent volley, marking her sixth goal of the season.
Amy Jackson and Kyra Cooney-Cross suffered knocks during the draw against Sydney.
Victory is unbeaten in five games and has clashes against Perth, Canberra United (February 22 and March 4) and Adelaide United (February 26) to finish the campaign.
Player in focus
Harriet Withers has made her return from injury and produced important cameos against both the Western Sydney Wanderers and Sydney FC.
What they said – Hopkins
on how the squad pulled up…
“We’re still waiting to hear on Amy. She’s gone for a precautionary scan today (Thursday) so we’re hoping nothing shows up on that and we’re hoping that everything is good with her. Kyra seems to be okay as well which is good. Just a lot of fatigue in the group so we’ve just got to be really careful what we do in terms of training and recovery over the next couple of days because it’s a very tight turnaround and then we’ve got another quick turnaround through mid-week and onto the weekend next week as well. It’s just a matter of we’re pretty happy that we haven’t come out with any serious injuries hopefully and then it’s just fatigue is the only thing that’s going to kind of worry us going into the weekend’s games, that accumulation.”
on growing belief…
“We’ve been getting better at a number of things over the last four weeks. A few people had questioned could we do it against the better teams at the top and I think for us we wanted to answer people that were questioning us, but also most probably give ourselves a few answers so we knew what we could do against the better teams. Obviously we’ve got a lot of respect for Sydney and as a team so far they’ve been the benchmark team of the season so it was good for us to go toe to toe with them and to come out probably causing them a lot of problems in the second half of the game when we upped our intensity and played to our full potential. The thing that maybe shocked us a bit in the first half is we haven’t come up against a team that played with that sort of intensity with the ball, without the ball, in transition and it caught us in the first half by surprise a little bit, but I think the really pleasing thing for me and the rest of the team was we did and we were able to raise our game and that’s one of the markers of a good side. Sometimes you get outplayed in certain parts of the game, but you can find another gear from somewhere and we definitely did that last night and I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d come home winning the game 3-2.”
on Melina Ayres…
“She’s training with the side. We came in and did some work with her this morning, myself and Jayden (Anderson), some individual stuff. She’s looking very confident now in terms of knowing that the injury is gone and she’s ready to kind of push on from here. I’m hoping to get her back doing a little bit more on Friday and across the weekend and hopefully if she feels right after that and there’s no reaction then to put her into full training next week and then it’s just a matter of just seeing where she is in terms of her fitness and where we might be able to fit her into the squad.”
Last time
Liberty A-League 2020/21 Round 4
Melbourne Victory 6-0 Perth Glory
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Epping Stadium, Melbourne
Ayres put Victory on its way with a first-half brace before Claudia Bunge and Zimmerman scored after the break.
Kyra Cooney-Cross struck a brace in the final half-hour of a comprehensive win.
Head to head
Round 4, 2020/21: Victory 6-0 Glory at Epping Stadium
Round 9, 2020/21: Glory 0-1 Victory at Dorrien Gardens
Round 7, 2019/20: Glory 1-2 Victory at Dorrien Gardens
Semi Final, 2018/19: Victory 2-4 Glory (aet) at AAMI Park
Round 14, 2018/19: Glory 1-2 Victory at Dorrien Gardens
