South Melbourne boss Chris Taylor has voiced his displeasure at what he perceived to be nullifying tactics applied by Green Gully in their narrow league win on Sunday.
With South grinding out a 1-0 win – courtesy of an early Matthew Theodore header – the ability that the Cavaliers showed to stop their more fancied opponents from playing was to their credit in the narrow loss.
Taylor definitely took notice, but assured that had his side been more clinical, the match wouldn’t have been such a nervy affair.
“I thought the way that Gully wanted to play kind of made it that way so that made it difficult for us,” the South Melbourne coach said.
“There wasn’t a great deal of football played but we had chances to have buried it and if we would’ve gone 2-0 up it would’ve been a totally different game.
“We’ve only got ourselves to blame but we also defended well so that was a pleasing aspect.”
Taylor also conceded they had to win ugly today, with Gully forcing South’s hand with the route one style football they took to Lakeside.
“A lot of teams try and make it a little ugly and hard for us,” he said.
“They went direct today. When teams come and try to play against us, it kind of suits us. Teams are stopping that and we have to adjust to whatever conditions they want us to play under.
“It wasn’t the prettiest game. It was pretty drub our there at times. The conditions weren’t brilliant but we made it hard for ourselves with the chances we missed.”