Melbourne Victory head coach Jeff Hopkins shared his thoughts following Friday night’s 1-1 draw with Perth Glory.
On the performance…
“I think it was pretty even.”
“We had the better of the first half.”
“They came out very strong in the second half.”
“We probably ran out of ideas…found it very difficult to penetrate their back four.”
“Big credit to the way that they defended. They also caused us quite a few problems on the counter.”
“It was probably…disappointing because I was hoping we’d win the game today, but looking at the game… this was probably a good result for us in the end.”
On Paige Zois’ goal…
“Fantastic.”
“She’s done everything we’ve asked her again today.”
“Really pleased for us as a team that she did it, but also for her. She’s been working really hard over the last couple of months. It’s good to get a bit of recognition and reward with a great goal like that.”
On the number of young players in the team…
“We talked about that before the game. We said if you’re good enough you’re old enough.”
“They were in the team today on merit.”
“But I felt at certain times of the game we were asking a lot more of them and expecting a lot more of them. They are starting A-League Women’s players. We expect more consistency and for them to be a little bit better as well.”
“I’m really pleased with the way that they’re all going, but we need to do better.”
On Lia Privitelli’s absence…
“Lia could have played today.”
“I made the decision.”
“Obviously we’ve got four games in 13 days coming up. My decision was that, if she played today, she would most probably have a disrupted training week next week – if worst came to worst she might not have played next week – so I made the call to leave her out.”
“It was a soft tissue (injury), quite minor. But it could have been aggravated in the game.”
On the Rylee Baisden injury…
“A lot of the girls have gone over and spoken to her, I have as well. I don’t think she really knows what it is yet.”
“We’ll keep our fingers crossed for her and hopefully it’s not as serious as we thought.”
On the upcoming weeks…
“I thought we looked a little bit heavy and tired after the game today.”
“I think we’ve got to have a real good look at ourselves, how we recover at the games, individual recovery, team recovery.”
“We’re not going to be able to train next week to be honest due to the travelling and the closeness of the games.”
“I’m pretty sure we’ll get Lia (Privitelli) back. We’ll get Bungey (Claudia Bunge) back as well. That’s obviously going to be a help for us.”
