Heidelberg United coach John Kyrgios was understandably disappointed after his side were humbled 2-0 by a clinical Bulleen Lions in their Women’s State Knockout Cup quarter-final clash on Monday.
The head coach saw his side cop two early goals in either half, which meant they never really got going on a cold night at Olympic Village.
“[Conceding early] certainly doesn’t help, especially when you’ve got a very young team in there – which is what we had today – it’s very hard to come back and fight hard,” Kyrgios said in regards to the opening goal.
“That probably does has something to do with it but, very disappointed today, there’s no doubt about it.
“In the first half we were a bit too reactive. I think they had a better possession game than what we had. We didn’t follow our game plan in terms of the areas I wanted them to press.
“They looked a far better side; that was the truth of the matter for the first half and we tried to correct that in the second half. We started off fairly well but then we conceded an early goal again.”
Kyrgios admitted it hurt to tumble out of the cup competition in such a lacklustre manner, citing the hard work the club had put in to progress to the latter stages.
To see it all done with a performance that was in his eyes sub-par was disheartening.
“It is a bit disappointing, we’ve had a hard slog to get to where we’ve gotten in regards to the state cup,” he said.
“But unfortunately we just didn’t turn up tonight – that was it really, that was the disappointing aspect that we didn’t play to our levels.
“We’ve been increasing the quality of our play over the last few games and today we just slumped back into the old routine.
The Warriors will no doubt be hoping to see a marked improvement in performance when the two sides meet again on Saturday for their league clash.
Their coach has promised that it’ll be a completely different game this time around, with the chance for redemption an exciting prospect.
“I’m pretty sure that the showing out here on Saturday is going to be different to tonight,” Kyrgios said.
“We’ll work on a few things that we’ll want to fine tune and we’ll have a certain game plan that everyone has to follow and I’m sure that we’ll do way better than tonight. So looking forward to it actually.”
Heidelberg United and top-of-the-table Bulleen Lions do battle once again at Olympic Village, this time with league points the prize on offer. Kick-off is scheduled for 3:00pm on Saturday afternoon.