Melbourne Victory Head Coach Jeff Hopkins was pleased with his team’s 2-1 Derby win over City in the Liberty A-League on Sunday.
Victory had to come from behind on a warm afternoon at AAMI Park after Amy Jackson’s unfortunate own goal on the stroke of half-time.
Catherine Zimmerman levelled the contest before Lynn Williams, on her Club debut, scored a 70th-minute winner, and Victory held on after Jackson’s late red card.
Speaking at a post-match news conference, Hopkins discussed the result and Alex Chidiac’s debut for Victory.
on the game…
“I don’t know if we got out of jail, I think we deserved what we got. I think our second-half performance was good, the game was really tight in the first half, as we expected, they play with a real intensity with the ball and without the ball and really tested us. I’m really pleased to come out with three points and it just shows the difference that a player can make of Lynn’s quality when you bring her on. In saying that, I think the disappointing thing and the pleasing thing that we’re so far off our best, when we hit our best we’re going to be absolutely awesome. A little bit disappointed with some areas of the game today, but one thing that this team has got, they’ve got bags of resolve and resilience and I think they dug pretty deep today, especially at the end when we were down to 10 players. Overall, really, really happy with everything today.”
on Chidiac…
“First of all, again, it shows her character to come in off a couple of days preparation and from what I understand she hasn’t been playing too many 90-minute games so to come in and do as well as she did for as long as she did was excellent. I think the way that we played in the first half, which was kind of down to me a little bit, we played a little bit too direct and to get the best out of our midfield players, all four of them – I include ‘AJ’ (Jackson) in that as well – we need to be playing through the midfield, we need to be playing through the zones to feet and we didn’t really do that for the major part of the first half, second half it was a bit better when the game opened up especially, we were able to keep it and play through and I think she showed with her just touch and the dribble and the through pass for the first goal what she can be like. I’m really pleased with her, she’s going to be pretty sore tomorrow I’m sure but I said to her on Friday that she looks like she’s just slotted in like she’s been here for years and years so really pleased with her performance.”
on Jackson…
“I think (Hannah) Wilkinson was a real handful today. She’d be a real handful for any experienced centre-back. For ‘AJ’ to jump in there with, I don’t know when the last time she’s played there, she had one training session this week in there, I thought she did exceptionally well. Just one of those things, the own goal, I can tell you about plenty of those, there’s nothing you can do sometimes, the trajectory of the ball, she’s got into the right place, and bang it’s gone into her own net, so there’s no blame, there’s no implications there. It (the red card) was tough, I think there was a mistake just before that and the ball was played through and I think she made a genuine attempt at the ball and just tired legs, I haven’t seen it yet either so I don’t know if the other player was through on goal or if she was going wide, but I’ll have a look at that in a little while.”
