Boroondara Eagles coach Fil Simao was pleased with his side’s ability to bounce back from a negative result, after his side turned around a 6-1 trouncing at the hands of Casey last week to defeat Cairnlea by the same margin on Sunday.
Following some soul-searching during a difficult week, the Eagles refocused to cut out defensive errors from their game while still attacking with intent, keeping a clean sheet and scoring five goals past the unfortunate hosts.
The Eagles’ mentor was pleased with the all-round performance from his players across the whole park.
“The result was a fair reflection [of the balance of play]. We spent a fair amount of time in our forward half and tried to play on this ground, which isn’t the easiest ground to play on, and we did really well,” Simao said.
“We’ve been working on that all season, and then last week – disaster – with the result and how it all went there.
“Today was a back to basics, back to what we’ve been working on when in possession and when the opposition have the ball.
“We started off really well from the back, kept a clean sheet and kept them at bay.”
Adopting an untraditional approach to re-instill some confidence back into his players, Simao produced a piece of paper documenting similar results from top teams around the world who still went onto enjoy successful seasons in their respective leagues.
“100%, I even went as far as bringing a piece of paper to the girls with some results of some matches that had gone way out of control [in the world’s top leagues],” he said.
“It was just to give them an example that it does happen, it shouldn’t happen, but it does, and that they need to move on from it, and realise that nobody becomes a bad team overnight – far from it – and it was a fantastic response.”
With the club’s original objective to avoid relegation now looking like a seemingly modest target, Simao said the 4th placed Eagles’s next target was to consolidate a place in the finals amidst a tough run of games.
“Our initial aim was to avoid relegation- that’s well and truly achieved,” he said.
“Our next aim is to make the finals, so if we can squeeze into the top five it’ll be fantastic.
“We’ve got a couple of big, big games coming up – against Box Hill, Bulleen, Heidelberg – but our aim is to squeeze into the finals.
Fourth placed Boroondara returns to Knox to host fifth placed Box Hill on Sunday in a highly anticipated contest.