Match winner Mate Dugandzic has spoken of the relief in the Melbourne Heart camp after his side secured a maiden victory for the season, beating Newcastle Jets 3-1 at AAMI Park.
Dugandzic netted a brace either side of the half-time break to ensure Heart’s winless streak ended at 20 games.
The forward was pleased with not only the result, but also with the performance his team put on show for a win hungry Melbourne crowd.
“Obviously happy, a little bit of a sense of relief,” he said.
“We played quite well, especially in the first half – it felt like we dominated the majority of the play.
“They only really had the one shot on goal and obviously it went in but that’s the way it goes sometimes, but we were able to come back and were able to fight back, so that a promising thing we can take out of the game as well.”
Dugandzic was in particular proud of his sides ability to come back from a goal down, and turn the game on its head on the stroke of half-time.
“I supposed we were always into the game, we felt like we were dominating,” he said.
“They scored against the run of play but when Iain [Ramsay] scored, it felt like it gave us an extra boost.
“We knew we were always in the match, we always knew we were going to create more and more chances throughout the match, so we just wanted to take one and thankfully it took a slight deflection and went in.
“That changed the tide a little bit for us and we got on top a lot more.”
Dugandzic put Heart 2-1 up minutes later ensuring coach John van ‘t Schip had a much easier half-time talk.
“[van ‘t Schip] said to keep on going the way we were, keep on creating chances and hopefully we’ll manage to get one and thankfully we did,” Dugandzic said.
“Obviously there was a couple more chances, I’ll put my hand up I probably should have scored two more.”
Despite the victory, Dugandzic remains grounded, preferring to look at the whole season so far as the basis for judgement.
“We know ourselves there’s a long way to go into the season and playing 14-15 games and winning only one game, its not good enough, we know that ourselves.
“[van ‘t Schip] has come in and he’s wanted us to play, so I’ve felt like the style of play has been slightly different, and we’ll keep on going the way we are and hopefully we’ll get a few more results.”