Melbourne Victory head coach Jeff Hopkins shared his thoughts following Saturday afternoon’s 1-0 win against Canberra United.
On the performance…
“The first half was good.”
“We knew Canberra are a team able to attack quickly and get in behind.”
“We can take a lot of confidence from our performance in the first half with the ball but there is a lot for us to work on in the second half with and without the ball.”
“When you start messing around with the team and the formula that has gotten us to where we are…we lost our way a fair bit in the second half.”
On Casey Dumont…
“Sometimes in certain games you don’t play well and you win. You have to rely on probably one player…Casey just pulled us out of the mire on many occasions.”
“I guess that’s what she’s paid her wages for – to stop the ball from going in.”
“But she knows what I think of her as a player. I make it quite clear that I think she’s a mile ahead of everyone in terms of goalkeepers in this league.”
On Alex Chidiac…
“If you know Chids, she works so hard on her game.”
“Over the past two or three weeks she’s been working…with the strikers, shooting, working on her technique and power.”
“It was great to see her get in there, get in between two defenders and finish as well.”
“It just shows that if you work hard enough at your game you can make really big improvements.”
On Paige Zois…
“I think Paige needs to have a special mention.”
“A number six, or sometimes a number ten, a midfield player, we’ve asked her to go and play out wide on the wing.”
“I thought she did a really good job for us.”
“With the ball in the first half I thought her movement inside set up some of our best attacks. She understood everything that we asked of her.”
On Miranda Templeman’s absence…
“In training on Thursday she came for a ball, landed and she was on the ground for an hour.”
“She had to be taken away from the training ground in an ambulance…we had to be careful because it may have been a spinal injury.”
“It was just a really heavy knock. We got her scanned and there was no damage done.”
“But she was still very stiff today, so we had to race in and get Melissa (Maizels) ready for today’s game as well.”
On the squad’s health…
“Melina (Ayres) was running today. So we need to see how she pulls up.”
“It’s a hamstring…I don’t think it’s too bad. It’s nothing like last year’s (injury). It was something we didn’t even pick up on because it was that small. I guess, because of the way it progressed last year, we’re being quite cautious with her.”
“If she (Ayres) feels confident to play next week, we’ll put her in. If she’s not, we’ll wait as long as it takes. I don’t think it will be more than a couple of weeks.”
“Bungey (Claudia Bunge) is there or there about. I was hoping she might have been ready for today.”
“KK (Elise Kellond-Knight) will be ready (for next week). She’s just a bit sick…but she’ll be ok.”
“Gema (Simon) most probably is one that will take a little bit longer.”
On next week’s game against Perth…
“We’ve got the advantage that we’ve worked on a few things around Perth only a couple of weeks ago. So it’s still quite fresh in the players’ minds.”
“If we can win that it’ll give us five games on the spin, which then leads us into the tough three games in one week.”
“We’ve got the possibility of getting nine points in one week which could push us right up to the top of the league.”
