NPL preview: Ballarat v Victory

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Melbourne Victory makes the trip to Ballarat City in Round 6 of the NPL2 West on Saturday.

Victory is unbeaten in its past four games, but it has played out three consecutive draws.

Its most recent was a thrilling 4-4 result against league leader the St Albans Saints.

Victory has only lost one of its opening five matches, seeing it sit seventh on the table early in the campaign.

Nuh Sehavdic, Nicholas Sette, Birkan Kirdar and Thierry Iradukunda were on the scoresheet against the Saints.

Sehavdic, 17, and Sette, 17, have each scored two goals for Victory so far this season.

Ballarat is fourth on the table after two wins from five to begin the season.

Victory and Ballarat last met in August last year, playing out a 2-2 draw at Epping Stadium.

Head coach Gareth Naven
“Training content changes a little bit week to week, obviously (looking at) things that we need to get better at. I’d like to think what we can do against a team like St Albans to what we can achieve against a team like Ballarat, more so in trying to reproduce the effort that we displayed against St Albans. I think that’ll be a big focus in regards to how we reproduce that effort and affect our performance and try to do things a bit better.”

This week

NPL2 West 2018 Round 6
Ballarat City v Melbourne Victory
Saturday, March 24, 6.00pm AEDT
Morshead Park Stadium, Ballarat

U20 NPL2 West 2018 Round 6
Ballarat City v Melbourne Victory
Saturday, March 24, 4.00pm AEDT
Morshead Park Stadium, Ballarat

U18 NPL West 2018 Round 5
North Geelong Warriors v Melbourne Victory
Saturday, March 24, 11.00am AEDT
Elcho Park, Lara

U15 NPL West 2018 Round 5
North Geelong Warriors v Melbourne Victory
Saturday, March 24, 9.30am AEDT
Elcho Park, Lara

Last week

NPL2 West: Victory 4 (Sehavdic 2′, Sette 21′, Kirdar 67′, Iradukunda 88′) St Albans Saints 4
U20 NPL2 West: Victory 2 (Morton 2′, Hamakiotis 16′) St Albans Saints 4
U18 NPL West: Victory 4 (Moukachar 40′, Serra 44′, Bassal 88′, Tountas 89′) Brunswick City 0
U15 NPL West: Victory 2 (Hogan 1′, Karvounis 9′) Brunswick City 3