What Head Coach Jeff Hopkins had to say following Victory’s 3-2 defeat to Melbourne City on Saturday afternoon.
On the match…
“I was reasonably happy with the way we were going.”
“First half we were a little bit stretched out early in the game. But after we made a few adjustments, made ourselves a little bit more compact, we got back into the game.”
“After half-time I thought we actually were looking reasonably comfortable and I thought we conceded when we were looking the most comfortable we’d looked all game.”
“There’s definitely a few things we need to be better at.”
“I don’t like to see our players being physically out-done. Apart from maybe three or four players, they were physically…more determined.”
“Basic errors cost us. Positional errors and obviously technical errors.”
“I think we were our own worst enemies today.”
On the refereeing…
“I saw the way she let things go, from what I saw it was one-sided.”
“[Chidiac] gets no protection out there. She gets absolutely smashed.”
“It’s part of the game. She goes in and she puts her body on the line.”
“But you know, if people are coming in and crunching you…if they want to do it and they don’t get punished, they’ll just keep doing it.”
On Gielnik being subbed off…
“Cramps. She cramped again.”
“We were forced into a couple of substitutions.”
“I was pleased with the way we kept going.”
On the attitude going into next week…
“We have to learn from this. We must learn and we’ve got to learn quickly.”
“We can’t go anywhere in this league and continue to get bashed up and losing physical duels.”
“That’s…a big part of this league.”
