Gielnik looms as key to Victory ALW push as she refuses to let Paris dream disappear
As his side prepares to face Wellington, Melbourne Victory coach Jeff Hopkins knows that Emily Gielnik's form looms large for his side's title hopes - and he's backing her to push for Paris, too.
All manner of things are set to come to a head in the Australian women’s game over the coming months, in both the domestic and international scene. With just five games remaining in its expanded regular season, the A-League Women competition largely remains wide open, a six-team finals series keeping more clubs alive than ever. On the international front, the Matildas making official their place at the Paris Olympics has brought into focus not only the stakes involved in the coming Games but who will be a part of the 18-entrusted with the task of chasing gold.
Inevitably, it’s led to plenty of pontification and deliberation, hypotheticals put forth about what will happen and what should happen. Indeed, nowadays, everybody wants to talk like they’ve got something to say, acting like they forgot about Emily Gielnik… apologies to Dr Dre.
The Melbourne Victory attacker sent an ominous warning to the rest of the competition with an authoritative two-goal haul against Western Sydney before the international break, with her second a spectacular lob from near the halfway line that capped off a 4-0 thumping against an ostensible finals rival. Battling niggling injuries and needing to build up her fitness, it’s taken a while for the 31-year-old to find her footing this season but after three straight starts under her belt – with three goals across that stretch – she looms as perhaps the key figure in Victory’s efforts to stage a march on a top-two finish and a week off in the first round of the finals.
Victory entered round 18 of the season, a week in which they will welcome Wellington to the Home of the Matildas on Sunday, sitting fourth on the table, undefeated in their last six matches, and with games against second-placed Melbourne City and third-placed Sydney FC still to come on their schedule. After a three-game across late December and early January threatened to derail their season, the ship has been steadied just as other rivals began to fall away, and the fearsome collection of talent assembled under the tutelage of Jeff Hopkins remains eminently capable of beating anyone.
And a fully fit and firing Gielnik is a key cog in his plans for a third title in four seasons.
“That's why we signed her,” Hopkins said. We understand what type of player she can be,”
“She can totally dominate opposition defenders. Even earlier in the season, when she came onto the field, she affected the opposition, but also she affected us really positively as well.
“She gives us another dimension, a different energy. She adds something else to the way that we can hurt our opposition. She then makes it easier for players like Chids [Alex Chidiac], Rachel [Lowe] and Beattie [Goad], those types of players, it's much easier to get the ball to them when Emily's on the field.
“There's a little more space, because players, they're not as confident to really close down as tight because they know that the threat of a ball in behind them is always there. She gives us another dimension, we can now play in different ways.”
But it’s not only domestic success that Gielnik is chasing.
Capable of playing both out wide as a central striker and blessed with a physically imposing frame that, especially with Sam Kerr out with an ACL, provides a different dynamic to other potential attacking options, she reiterated her belief that she still had a fighting chance of forcing her way into Tony Gustavsson’s plans for the Paris Olympics to Channel Ten on Wednesday evening.
Making her Olympic debut as a member of the Tokyo 2020 squad but then missing the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup through injury, she declared she was bringing a “never say die” approach to the task. And while Michelle Heyman’s five goals across the two games against Uzbekistan may have added several degrees of difficulty to that task, Hopkins remains strong in his belief that she is capable of not only driving her club side to success but also finding a way onto the plane to Paris.
“She's not given up on her dream to go to the Olympics either,” he said. “She understands that she's playing for us and she's putting everything in for us but that still keeps that dream alive and I'm fully backing her for that as well, to think that way as well.”
The path towards Gielnik and Victory’s destination, however, first goes through Wellington – who will be strengthened for the clash by the likely return of Football Ferns Michaela Foster, Mackenzie Barry, and Brianna Edwards, as well as leading scorer Mariana Speckmaier and midfielder Macey Fraser. After a promising start to the season the Nix, hit by both injury and international call-ups, have faded in recent weeks to sit in ninth position on the A-League Women table, four points back of the sixth-placed Newcastle Jets.
“It's not quite at the point where they've got to have a real go because the season is on the line, but this is kind of getting there,” said Hopkins. “So I'm expecting, as usual, a very competitive, hard-working, high-pressing team that will try and play technically good football. And that will give us a really tough game.”
Victory, for their part, lost McKenzie Weinert to NWSL side Seattle Reign during the international break but will welcome Goad back into the fold after her break to focus on her studies; Hopkins expressed pleasant surprise at just how fit she was after her hiatus, “
As usual, Beattie is a bit of a high achiever in everything that she does, so she came back and she's almost jumped back into where she left off.”
Courtney Newbon will once again start in goal with Lydia Williams and Miranda Templeman unavailable, with Hopkins stating that Williams was envisioned as returning around the time of Victory’s clash with City on March 17 but that could change to ensure she would be ready for finals.
Indeed, temperance was one of the key themes of Hopkins, wedding levels of ambition with an understanding that nothing could be taken for granted in a highly competitive 2023-24 season.
“We're looking at winning the last five games and seeing where that puts us,” he said. “The league at the moment.
“The interesting thing about the league this year is that everyone can beat everyone else and are beating everyone else. It's about getting some consistency into these games. For us, we're looking to win. We're looking to beat Wellington and then go to Adelaide and win that game.
“So it's game to game but we aim to go and win every game between now and the end of the season. And I feel we are capable of doing that if we go about things right. But we are also smart enough to realise that we can be beaten by every team as well, so we're looking to prepare really well for every game, to take every game on its own merits.
“I'm really impressed with the group of players that we've got on and off the field. They're really at the stage now where they understand the seriousness of the season, where we are in the season, the last five games and how important they are to maybe get anything to the top one or two positions to make things a little bit easier for us in finals if we make finals.
“They also realise that we have to be very, very careful with every team that we play, so the preparation that we put in the training, the recovery, every little aspect is really important.”