Melbourne Victory head coach Jeff Hopkins shared his thoughts following Sunday afternoon’s 1-0 win against Wellington Phoenix.
On the performance…
“We created a few really good chances early on. To give credit to the keeper, she made two or three great saves.”
“It was nice to score when we did from a set play. We spoke about that this week – we’ve worked a lot on our set plays over the last few weeks.”
“Really pleased for Melina (Ayres) to get off the mark as well. She’s working her way back into form and she worked really hard today so I’m really pleased for her.”
“We were better this week than we were last week.”
On the need for a positive result…
“I think you could feel the tension in the change room before the game.”
“We understood this was a really important game for us.”
“It wasn’t about the performance today, it was about the three points.”
On the midfield dynamic…
“We’re still a little bit away from being as fluid and as fluent as we should be.”
“But you can start to see there is a bit of a relationship building up between those two (Kellond-Knight and Chidiac), and Tiff (Eliadis) as well.”
On Beattie Goad…
“I said to her on Saturday that she just needs to make one or two little adjustments to her game.”
“I can’t see why she can’t be one…that is a real late shout for the Matildas.”
“She has been probably our best and most consistent player so far this year.”
“She is the type of player that listens, she works hard, and she’ll get better and better.”
On the shape of the squad…
“We’re now getting to the time where probably all our team has got two or three, maybe four, matches under their belt.”
“That match fitness is just starting to come.”
“I think we’ll see a different Victory team once every player has got those two or three games under their belts.”
On any injury concerns…
“I think most probably Gemma (Simon) just had some cramp – which is a bit disappointing.”
“She’s been cramping a few times this week in training, so it’s something we need to look at and be pretty vigilant with this week.”
“Gemma hasn’t had any game time for us at all (before today). She didn’t play at all through pre-season.”
On the hot conditions…
“It is the main factor of the game to be honest.”
“We had to change the way that we played in terms of the way we pressured and pressed. I’m sure they (Wellington) did as well.”
“If we want to have better quality games, maybe it’s something to think about that maybe we need to push things back a little bit.”
“Especially at standalone venues – I don’t see why we can’t do that.”
