An irate Nick Hegarty has lambasted the attitude of some of his fellow team mates and called for wholesale changes, after his side were humbled 6-1 by South Melbourne at Lakeside Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
Speaking to reporters after the embarrassing result, the Hume City FC skipper claimed that he was not taken aback by the capitulation, which he believes has been a constant factor hampering his side throughout this year’s campaign.
“To be honest, it’s no surprise,” he said.
“It’s been the story of our season. If you look at every time we go down – it’s 4, 5 and now 6.
“There’s a problem there that’s not being sorted all the way through the season, and it’s got to be rectified.”
When questioned as to the precise nature of the problem, the former St Mirren midfielder contended that his fellow colleagues were behind the failures thus far.
“I think it goes all the way to the top from the start of the season,” he said.
“The main problem is the players, that’s all it is.
“It’s not their ability, it’s them wanting to play. People not wanting the ball, people not wanting to tackle, not anticipating what’s going on and before you know it, we’ve being overrun and it’s 5-0.”
Coach Lou Acevski recently described his team’s mental frailty as being responsible for their fadeouts late in matches, and when asked as to what can be done to rectify this, Hegarty was forthright in his response.
“If it was up to me, you’ve got to make wholesale changes,” he asserted.
“From the start, it’s been next week, next week, next week, and nothing’s ever gone on.
“Unfortunately, we may have left it too late this year, but we still have fives games and we’re fourth, so we’re still in the finals, but somebody’s got to be showing that there are consequences.
“Unfortunately, we’ve gone through a whole season without any consequences. And whether we’ve been playing crap and we’ve nicked a win – that’s masked the major problems and we need to sort it out.
The Englishman will be hoping that his side can recover from their most recent hiding and turn things around against Richmond in a crucial fixture on Sunday afternoon.
“Every game’s must win. I know it’s a crappy thing to say, but I think we’ve taken it a little out of our hands now because of our embarrassing goal difference,” he added.
“It’s just that type of league – if people turn up, you win, if people don’t, you get beat and we haven’t been turning up for too many weeks now.”