Melbourne Victory captain Kevin Muscat has personally apologised to Adrian Zahra for the ‘mistimed’ tackle that resulted in his dismissal late in Saturday night’s Melbourne derby at Etihad Stadium.
Melbourne Victory captain Kevin Muscat has personally apologised to Adrian Zahra for the ‘mistimed’ tackle that resulted in his dismissal late in Saturday night’s Melbourne derby at Etihad Stadium.
The pair spoke briefly over the phone on Monday and while he was understandably disappointed by the veteran’s actions, Zahra accepted Muscat’s apology.
“Firstly having had a sleepless night myself I felt it was important that I did front up and accept everything that is going to be coming my way in relation to bans … and also being criticised (over) my character, my performance (and) all that comes with it,” Muscat said.
“I’m going to have to sit here and accept full responsibility for it.”
“But as you could understand my No.1 concern, my only concern as a matter of fact, is the welfare of Adrian.”
“It was an incident that I deeply regret, it was a mistimed tackle, dreadfully mistimed, (and) at no point did I have any intent to injure the player.”
“But as I said my only concern is the welfare of Adrian, and I wish him a speedy recovery.”
Muscat continued: “As I said last night was a difficult night for us but I think it was important that the first thing I did was I rang the club and said ‘Look I really need to do something about this’ and as I said the tackle was very, very late and the whole incident is regrettable.”
“Throughout my career I’ve played the game on the edge and I’ve never really thought of trying to hide away from the fact that that happens but I think my main focus at the moment is not what’s happened over the last couple of decades it’s about what happened last night and that’s where my concern lies.”
Victory coach Ernie Merrick conceded that the club doesn’t ‘condone’ such tackles but also pointed out that his team has built its foundation on playing exciting football.
We certainly don’t condone tackles like that and he will be sanctioned by the FFA and we’ll accept that,” Merrick said.
“But I’d like to point out that in our six seasons we’ve been a team that’s all about playing football and playing good quality football.”
“We’ve won a couple of premierships and championships in playing good football and Kevin’s been a part of that, he’s been a true professional with the club and so I’m hoping that he doesn’t retire after an incident like that.”
“He’s given so much to us and he certainly regrets it but I’m hoping the young boy’s fine.”
“It’s certainly not our style of play as you know.”
