Heidelberg United coach John Kyrgios believes his team is heading in the right direction, after a youthful looking side impressed with a 3-0 result against Casey Comets, putting a resounding end to a bad month for the club.
The finals hopefuls arrested a rare form slump, after going three games without a win before the result against Casey, with the head coach particularly impressed with the way the team stood up in the absence of several key players, including Laura Di Clemente, Michelle Verzi and Ebru Hasan.
“We’ve been through what you’d call a fairly bad spell for us the last month and I was just talking to the girls [about how] it was ironic that as soon as we got an actual accolade for coach of the month, we haven’t picked up anything so it was like a jinx,” Kyrgios said tongue in cheek.
“We’ve talked about some of the things that we needed to do a bit better than last week and the girls dug in today there’s no doubt about it, they worked very hard.
“We were a bit thin on, but it’s great to have a bit of a squad, we were missing five starters today, believe it or not. There’s obviously going to be competition for places which is good.”
With injuries plaguing his side in recent times, Kyrgios credited the efforts of the individuals who stepped up into the line-up and did their chances of future selection no harm.
“It’s great that today was probably the first game that we’ve started Belinda Pannella and she was just unbelievable, we were ecstatic that we got 90 minutes out of her and just goes to show she’s a quality player,” he said.
“We had three reserves players in today, there was another youngster that played for the whole game, Holly Tsalakidis. She was amazing and is one for the future there’s no doubt about it.
“Young Shakirah [Stephen] came on in the second half and again she won us the penalty. She’s got a lot of pace and is definitely another one for the future.”
Looking at the tactical side of the resounding victory, Kyrgios also hailed the impact the extra numbers in midfield had on the contest, which he believed to be a major contributor to the end scoreline.
“We had to be nice and tight and narrow in the middle of the park and we played with an extra midfielder today rather than out wide on the right. It just gave us that impotence that we wanted in the middle of the park,” he said.
“We thought that if we won the ball in the middle of the park that we’d win the game today and at the end of the day we could’ve scored four or five.”
Heading into the final few rounds, Kyrgios sees the remaining games as an opportunity for his team to finish the season strongly as the fifth place outfit aim to hold onto a finals position.
“We’ve got five or six rounds to go and out of those, four of them are very important games versus teams who are fighting for that fifth position or are already in that third or fourth position.
“We’re going to be desperate to get the points and we’re going to work very hard for that.”
Heidelberg take on Cairnlea away on Sunday afternoon. Kick-off is scheduled for 3pm at Cairnlea Park.