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Avondale Heights have moved to the top of the table following their come from behind 2-1 away win against St Albans, but coach Anthony Barbieri is not getting carried away, insisting his side have a long way to go and must keep improving to challenge for the NPL 1 title.
Despite a tough victory in a game where the winner was guaranteed top spot, the Avondale Heights mentor admitted his side were lucky at times, but were worthy winners after a spirited team performance.
“It’s not an easy place to come to, Churchill Reserve, but the players dug deep and showed character and will to win,” Barbieri said.
“I guess we rode our luck on a number of situations, but we took a couple of the chances that we had and that was the game.”
The coach was sympathetic towards goalkeeper Anthony Saric, at blame for St Albans’s goal, but remained coy on forward Opeksij Khrapko who leads the club’s scoring chart with five goals, acknowledging his goal scoring efforts but insisting he was also the beneficiary of good team play.
“In that sort of team performance we had [impressive] players all the way through. Our keeper made one error in the first half but came back to redeem his first half effort, our defense was solid as ever, and we never really got that threatened,” he said.
“The boys create the chances, ball goes in the right spot, we work on it during the week in training and he [Khrapko] gets on the end of it, and that’s what he gets paid for.
“Overall, it was a good team performance.”
However, despite Avondale nabbing top spot on the NPL 1 table, Barbieri refused to rest on his laurels, insisting there was lots of work yet to keep improving and fighting off the challenge of other teams, with only three points separating the top four clubs.
“To be honest, this is a work in progress. It’s never a finished product. We’ve got to keep our feet on the ground, there’s miles to go in the season, we haven’t achieved anything just yet, it’s a very long season,” he said.
“I’m sure once you get some injuries and suspensions, things can go the other way, so we’re enjoying the good run of form at the moment and we have to continue.
“I haven’t changed anything in three years at the club. You’ve got to have a good work ethic and work hard on the track, we just do what we believe in and have a set philosophy that we also believe in, and we’ll continue to work hard and hopefully get more good results than bad.”
Avondale Heights’s next game is against Richmond at home on Saturday; the latter coming off a late 4-3 defeat to Sunshine and still rocked by coach Grant Brebner’s departure from the club.