By Alyce Collett 22/2/25
Above: Melbourne Victory during the win over Brisbane Roar. Photo Bec Hartley for Impetus
Melbourne Victory had the perfect tune up for finals on the weekend with a 2-0 win over the Brisbane Roar. Impetus spoke to Jeff Hopkins after the match.
Despite no longer being in contention for the premiership because of what had happened in Perth the night prior, Victory coach Jeff Hopkins said after the match that “there were definitely a few things” that his side wanted to get out of the match.
“Definitely we need to be in form and playing well and confident, and that comes from winning games, and that was our seventh game on the spin winning,” Hopkins said.
“The players are confident, they know they can see games out, they can win games in lots of different ways. So it was really important for us to win the game because of that today.”
Hopkins also said that his side “wanted another clean sheet to get the record for clean sheets” and “in general, a good performance to finish the season here at home at AAMI Park.”
Before Saturday’s match one of the big talking points was the omission of Em Gielnik, with her absence denying her the opportunity to challenge Holly McNamara for the Golden Boot. However, Hopkins had reassuring words for all Victory fans.
“She’s fine, we just wrapped her up in cotton wool today,” Hopkins explained.
“She wanted to play as well, so I got the wrath of Em,” he said with a chuckle. “but yeah, I had to make a decision and I made that decision to look after her for the bigger games and she’ll have to just go with me for this one decision. And to be fair, it’s good that your players want to play and they want putthemselves forward and she’s that type of player.”
Another ultimately minor availability concern was around the goal keeping stocks, with the Victory forced to name young striker Sienna Techera as the back up goal keeper.
But, Hopkins had a simple, reassuring explanation for that rare situation.
“Geo [Candy] was sick yesterday and with it being Good Friday, it was too short notice to get a goalkeeper registered,” Hopkins explained.
“We did have another goalkeeper as our number three already ready to go, but she’s moved on to another club, so we decided to go with an outfield player and Sienna put her hand up, which was great for a young girl.”
The next fortnight provides an interesting challenge for Hopkins and his team, with a week off this coming weekend before a two legged semi final against a yet to be determined opponent. However, Hopkins has a definitive plan for how he and his charges will attack the next few weeks.
We’ve had a few weeks now where we’ve had an international window, so we are kind of used to having a week off and we’ve been very productive of what we’ve done through the season,” Hopkins said.
“We’ve always played on Saturday, we’re on the weekend, we’ve managed the minutes that we play in those games to give us real high intensity but keep the players on their feet for a minimum amount of time.
“We’ll work on position specific work, we’ll work on individual technical work and technical work, and we’ll probably look at some scenarios, some scenario based training where we’ll be able to go up and go down.”
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