Jeff Hopkins is targeting a 90-minute performance from Melbourne Victory Women against Western Sydney Wanderers this weekend.
Victory opened the 2025/26 Ninja A-League Women’s season with a narrow defeat away to Brisbane Roar, despite scoring twice at Spencer Park thanks to debut goals from midfielder Rhianna Pollicina and striker Kennedy White.
Round 2 has the Women’s First Team on their travels once more, as they venture to New South Wales on Sunday, November 9, kick-off 4pm AEDT, and the Head Coach knows what is required to land an away win.
Speaking during his pre-match press conference, Hopkins explained how he wants to see an unrrelenting performance against the Wanderers.
“I think the positive thing was that I thought we played very well for 70-75 minutes of the game. We were on top and probably not clinical enough in the periods that we did dominate,
“They were always dangerous, especially on the counter, and we didn’t handle those moments very well.
“So we’ve definitely highlighted those moments this week, but in general, I thought we were on top for big periods of the game. Our challenge this week is when we get on top of teams, we need to make sure that we just hammer home our advantage with goals on the scoreboard.”
The fixture will see Hopkins become the first person to bring up 200 A-League Women’s games in charge, as well as being just the fifth across the entire competition.
He was, though, typically humble when quizzed about reaching such a significant landmark.
Instead, Hopkins chose to focus on his players, and provided a positive injury update on off-season recruit Grace Maher, who was a late withdrawal against Brisbane following the lightning strike which delayed kick-off.
“She is available. It was touch and go [last week]. She probably could have started the game, but whether she would finished it and made the injury more serious, it probably would have done.
“She’s a senior player. She knows her body pretty well, and we didn’t want to take any risk with her. We had a good substitute there ready to come on in Rosie Curtis.”
Watch Hopkins’ full press conference below.
