Above: Perth Glory co-captain Izzy Dalton speaking to the media yesterday at the club’s Fremantle HQ. Image: Perth Glory.
by Ben Gilby (24/1/25)
Perth Glory co-captain Izzy Dalton insists that her team’s determination to right the wrongs of their performance away to Brisbane Roar can be the deciding factor when the two teams meet again at the Sam Kerr Football Centre on Sunday.
“Our performance away at Brisbane wasn’t great – we fell short majorly and we didn’t look in the game, but we’re well aware of that, we haven’t shied away from it,” she admitted.
“Leading up to this game, we’ve tried to put a lot of things right in training and I think we’ll go out there and put on a much better performance that we did (at Perry Park earlier in the season), and, of course, it’s my former team so you want to play well and you want to win!”
The Glory go into this encounter without a win in six games, with their latest reverse coming 4-1 at Western United on Tuesday. Despite this, Dalton points to the fact that the team’s run has largely been the consequence of small margins rather than consistently poor performances. As a consequence, confidence in the group remains strong.
“We’ve managed to keep the vibe really high, but we know the results have been really disappointing this far. I don’t think that’s changed the way we think and what we are capable of achieving.”
“If you look at our results, when we’ve lost games, it’s been 1-0 and conceding off set-pieces and stuff like that. Some of the defeats we’ve had have been really narrow. Except Western (United on Tuesday) and at Brisbane Roar earlier on in the year, they have been the only defeats that we have had that have hurt us majorly.
“The rest of them have been close games and that’s what we take into the second half of the season where we know we can compete with a lot of the teams.”
Whilst Brisbane Roar have been among the leaders on the ladder for all of the season, they are currently on a sticky run of results themselves, with three defeats in their last four matches. It’s a statistic that the Perth co-captain believes makes now a great time to face the Roar.
“Like any team in the league, at some point, other teams start to figure other teams out and maybe that’s been the case for them.
“It’s come at a great time. We’ve obviously come off the back of a few losses, and so have they. They’ll be up for it and so will be we, but I think it’s come at a good time to play them.”
“We know it’s hard for teams to travel across the country to play in Perth, so we have to use that to our advantage.”
The positive vibe of Dalton’s discussion also extended to matters surrounding her own fitness, with the news that she is recovered from an hamstring injury that has impacted the number of games that the English born player has been able to play.
“It didn’t come with great timing with the amount of injuries we have in the team, but during my time on the sidelines, we did win, and that’s important and I’m proud of the group for being able to do that.
“We do have a lot of strength in other ways, and we’ll begin to see that in the coming weeks when we have players coming back in training and playing games – we’ll start to look a bit stronger.”
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