By Kieran Yap 4/12/25
Above: Melbourne Victory celebrate a goal against Perth Glory. Photo: Adrian Geremia
Melbourne Victory coach Jeff Hopkins spoke to the media ahead of the Round Five meeting with Canberra United,
Despite a four day turnaround, Melbourne Victory are prepared to host Canberra United on Friday evening. Having defeated Perth Glory on Sunday and Claudia Bunge fresh off a battle with Sam Kerr and Hayley Raso on Tuesday night, Victory coach Jeff Hopkins is optimistc about the star defender’s availability.
“She’s pretty amazing,” Hopkins told the media.
“And she has been in the past (with) backing up from international duty.
“We’ll see what she’s like and make a decision from there.”
In Bunge’s absence, Victory opted for Laura Pickett to partner Kayla Morrison at centre back. The pair were helped by an outstanding performance from Zoe McMeeken and a typically controlling Grace Maher display.
Victory’s defensive stocks were further enhanced with the return of Taylor Ray. The midfielder made her first appearance for her new club and her first A-League Women minutes since she won the Grand Final last season.
“She’s fine to play more minutes if needed,” Hopkins said of the highly rated recruit.
“Obviously now for her it’s about getting back in the side.
“And for the player in the side to make it as hard as they possibly can for her by carrying on the performances close to where they were last week or better.”
Ray’s availability gives Hopkins a problem any coach would be envious of. The trio of Maher, Rhianna Pollicina and Rachel Lowe have connected instantly, and he insists that he could “easily” find a system and fits both Maher and Ray into the starting XI.
“It becomes a nice problem for me to have that I’ll have 20 player pushing really hard every day in training and the players that perform on the weekend and best through the week get to play.”
The 3-0 win against Perth Glory was perhaps Victory’s most convincing game of the season so far. Kennedy White found the net for a fifth time in four games and Pollicina scored her second of the season, with Sofia Sakalis adding and assist while bringing up her first goal for the club.
Despite not scoring for the second half, Victory continued to create chances through various routes and players. The half time lead also gave Hopkins the chance to rest players and manage his team, while getting minutes into the likes of Ray and Jessica Young.
“That’s probably the thing that pleased me the most,” Hopkins reflected
“How we were able to create chances, how we were able to be patient when we needed to be patient, go forward quickly when they did allow us to do that, and the way we mixed out game up which never really allowed Perth Glory to get into any kind of rhythm or work out how we were trying to do things.”
A player who had a large influence on Victory’s dominance was Maher. The A-League Women fan favourite returned to Victory having played two seasons at centre back for Western United and an outstanding campaign in midfield with The Essendon Royals in Victoria’s NPLW.
In her second stint at the club, she appears to be an almost complete player and ideally suited to Victory’s method of controlling games.
Maher can deliver killer passes in the final third, start attacks from deep or intercept opposition movement in the midfield. While last season saw Sara D’appolonia as the ball winner and Alana Murphy as the deep playmaker, Maher is both at once.
Against Perth, she was influential despite being carefully marked. In last weekend’s post-match press conference, Hopkins said that Perth’s pressing game determined how Maher would involve herself.
“We weren’t sure how they were going to press us, we had a number of ways of trying to attract the pressure a little bit. One of those was to play alongside Kayla… to drop into the back four.
“The way that they were trying to press us dictated her position a little bit.”
Looking ahead to Friday evening, Canberra present another challenge. But Hopkins believes that Victory are well prepared to meet it.
“Canberra always give us a tough game. they’re a really organized side with the coach that they’ve got and they’re very competitive. They play quite a physical game and they’re reasonably direct and obviously with Michelle Heyman at one end, they’ve got a player in her that can finish things off.”
“They’re a decent side this year, but we’ve had a look at them and we’ve worked defensively on things that we can do, but most of todays session was about us and how we can break them down.
“They’re coming to our place. We’re going to make it really hard for them. We’re not going to let them settle, we’re going to be at them right from the word go.”
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