Werribee City coach Nino Ragusa was disappointed in the manner of which his team only took a point from Heidelberg, but was happy to at least have scored from open play.
After going ahead through a Steven Cudrig header, Werribee found themselves trailing after a penalty from Dan Heffernan and an error from Tommy Dunn pegged them back.
Ragusa couldn’t forgive the second goal, which helped swing the match in favour of Heidelberg so soon after half-time.
“I’m not happy because we gifted them the second goal, I’m not happy,” Ragusa said.
“If you come here before the game and say ‘I’ll take a point’ I’d would probably say ‘yeah I’d take it’ before the game. But how the game went, how we were tactically spot on all game, they really didn’t do much against us, the second goal was unacceptable again.”
“It’s not made up, or not made up. You can’t call it like that. It’s an error that shouldn’t be made. That’s it.
“Turning point of the game, 2-1, it doesn’t matter. Like I said, I’ll praise them when I have to praise them but unfortunately they’ll get criticized when need be.”
Ragusa put the mistakes down to inexperience and youth, aspects of the game that cannot be hidden from at the top level.
“A very young team that’s making simple errors and at this level you get crucified for it. Crucified,” he said.
“It’s not a level where you can probably get away with stuff like that. You can make an error like that in First Division and we would have won like 4-1 and everybody hides it.
“You can’t hide it here. From 1-0 up, we’re 2-1 down when we really don’t deserve to be 2-1 down. 1-1 and we’ll still push to win the game.”
Still the manager praised his centre-back Steven Cudrig, after he scored his fourth goal of the season to make him the top goalscorer for the club.
“Excellent, excellent, excellent, because himself and probably two others are just from Altona Magic, mid-table First Division players,” he said.
“Young boys Robbie Naumoski, Bobby Vidanovski, Steven Cudrig, are all 19, 20, 21. Again, they live locally in the Western suburbs and I decided to give them an opportunity at this level.
“He’s a good character and he’s done well defensively and he’s scored four goals all from set-pieces. The set-piece was excellent, the delivery has been good and the execution is something we’ve been working on.
Next up for Werribee is Port Melbourne, and Ragusa goes into that clash believing his side can take the points in what is turning out to be a crucial game at the bottom end of the league.
“On their day, anybody’s going to beat anybody in this league. That’s the one real thing at the moment going around,” he said.
“Even Goulburn, I know they have their moments but some days they seem to just go all over the shop on the day. You’ve seen from Friday night, right here until today. No one would have backed us maybe to even pinch three points today but maybe we should’ve.
“On the day if you set it up right and the boys are spot on – and I thought we were today – especially coming from two narrow losses against the two top sides.”
And he hopes that his side can continue to score from open play, something which hasn’t happened very often this season.
“If you look at our stats, I think about 45-55% of our goals have come from set pieces,” Ragusa said.
“It’s about time we’ve done something from open play. That’s still a huge area that we’ve got to improve on. Maybe the transfer window we’ll get some extra strength there as well, it just needs to be done.”