Dandenong Thunder coach Dean Hennessey has described the clubs first NPL loss as a handy lesson for his young side, who fell to Bentleigh Greens 3-1 on Friday night.
The Thunder boss admitted that the natural progression is to move on from the loss, especially give their wonderful start to the season so far.
“All the other games we’ve won or drew, we’ve been unbeaten until today and it’s a pretty good start for such a new team,” Hennessey said.
We’re man enough to accept that when you get beat, you get beat and move forward but I’m still pretty excited about this group.
“We’ve got off to a really, really good start, I’m delighted with the start – I’m disappointed we got beat but we’re positive, we’ll accept this, we’ll take it on the chin.
“We most probably need to learn a few lessons from this to move forward and hopefully improve for next week.”
“The captain [Alan Mulcahy] said ‘when you’re winning it’s easy, everything’s good, when you drawing everything’s good…it’s when you get beat, how do you react?’ and they’ll bounce back, they’re a good group,” he added.
The Thunder saw their 1-0 lead chalked off by three straight goals to the Greens, ensuring the travelling side left Kingston Heath empty handed.
“[Bentleigh Greens] is a difficult place to come – at the end of the day, we’ve gotten beaten, it’s the first time we’ve been beaten,” Hennessey said.
“We were really good first half without setting the world alight. We’ve then changed a couple of things and scored a goal but they equalised within two minutes, so all of the advantage went away.”
Dandenong Thunder looked dangerous on the counter attack during the contest, as they have throughout the season so far, with Hennessey confirming this will be the trend for the Thunder throughout the season.
“We’ve got a lot of mobility in the team – a lot of our players, I think, are quite quick,” he said.
“I’ve most probably never worked with a team that’s as quick as this in the sense of having the ability to break and what we’ve built ourselves on is up until today we’ve conceded one goal in 450 minutes.”
After an entertaining but scoreless first half, Hennessey decided to reshuffle the team and brought on young gun Matt Millar during the break – a move that had an immediate impact for Dandenong.
THe NPL Rising Star of the Month scored in virtually no time, as he zipped past Bentleigh’s defence before finishing coolly, a goal and performance that drew praise from his coach.
“He plays the game really well as a full-back but I reckon you could play him in nearly every position, I really do,” Hennessey said.
You could play him centre-half, play him at left-back, play [him] in central midfield and you [could] play him up front.
“He’s still 17, he’s still learning the game and he’ll only get better, he’s a smashing lad to work with and I think we’ve got some really good young lads [in the side].
Dandenong Thunder face another stiff test as they take on Miron Bleiberg’s Oakleigh Cannons at Jack Edwards Reserve on Friday night with kick-off scheduled for 8:30pm