Melbourne Victory Head Coach Jeff Hopkins was proud of his team after reaching another Liberty A-League Grand Final on Sunday.
Victory produced a dominant display with a 3-1 Derby win over City in the Preliminary Final at AAMI Park.
Melina Ayres, Claudia Bunge and Lia Privitelli scored as the Champions reached a second straight decider, with Sydney FC awaiting at Jubilee Stadium on March 27.
Speaking at his post-match news conference, Hopkins discussed the team performance and the displays of Alex Chidiac and Ayres.
on the game…
“Just really proud of the players. I could see they were really focused yesterday and today, maybe a little bit nervous, but really proud of the effort they put on. Very pleased with the amount of chances that we created, I’m very, very happy with that. We got out to a strong lead, got the early goal in the second half and were reasonably comfortable until the last 10 minutes or so, give them credit they never stopped, they kept pushing and pushing hard, got a goal back and without really causing us too many problems I don’t think, they made it a little bit frantic I think in the last 10 minutes, but very, very happy with us going forward and the amount of chances we made. In terms of the way we went about things as well, we did things the way we talked about doing them today and the way they carried out the game plan was just as we expected it.”
on Chidiac…
“She’s been very, very good every week, every game she turns up and puts in a really consistent performance. In terms of the ground that she covered, I remember one instance she was crossing the ball one end and she was fouled at the edge of the box and next thing she’s making a slide tackle to stop them getting a cross in 80 metres down the other end of the field. I don’t know where she gets her energy from, but she was excellent today, very, very pleased with her performance. Casey (Dumont) made some crucial saves for us as well at very important times of the game, very happy with her, but in general I thought it was a very good team performance.”
on reason for dominance…
“We talked about first of all making sure that we didn’t get caught playing out like we did in the last game. We were a little bit naïve trying to play out too much. We talked about maybe playing through their press, playing over their press, into our front players to get the ball back into ‘Chids’ and into Kyra (Cooney-Cross) and then looking to penetrate and we did that really well I thought. First half especially when they pushed up to try and press us, we were able to play through, over and then penetrate around the halfway line, which is kind of what we planned to do and it’s quite nice when a plan comes to fruition like it did today.”
on Ayres…
“Maybe not her best form, but very good form. She’s got a lot more to offer, which is a bit scary because she’s playing very, very well at the moment. She’s great with her back to goal. She is a great target, she brings other players into the game and I think when we talk about us being able to penetrate today, I think that’s because we had a target to play into, to hold the ball up, to set the ball back and then the next ball goes in behind so that’s great for Lia, that’s great for ‘Zimm’ (Catherine Zimmerman), they’ll really appreciate her being in there. The other thing is she makes very, very good runs herself, along the line, knows when to cut in, knows when to time her runs and bend her runs in behind. She’s given us another dimension.”
