Victory not haunted by past ahead of Mariner re-match
Melbourne Victory ALW assistant Gareth Turnbull says the squad hasn’t used the heartbreak of last year’s penalty shootout elimination by Central Coast as motivation ahead of their Unite Round clash.
Melbourne Victory assistant coach Gareth Turnbull says the squad hasn’t used the heartbreak of last year’s penalty shootout elimination by Central Coast in the A-League Women finals as motivation for the coming Unite Round clash, the first meeting between the two since that dramatic evening.
Finishing fourth and fifth on the table at the end of the 2023-24 regular season, Victory and the Mariners in an Elimination Final at the Home of the Matildas last season, one of the first meetings in the newly-expanded A-League Women finals.
Neither belligerent able to be separated across 120 minutes, penalties were needed to separate the two sides in their elimination final meeting this year, where Victory boss Jeff Hopkins found himself on the wrong side of a phenomenon he’d previously used to great effect: penalty shootout Casey Dumont.
The custodian – who departed Gosford to join Perth Glory in the offseason, which Turnbull would joke took some heat out of the re-match – converted a penalty and saved two of Victory’s to propel the Mariners to a 4-2 win in the shootout, eliminating her former side almost a year on from a similar performance in their colours.
The result sealed Victory’s earliest end to a campaign since they last failed to reach the finals in 2017-18 but ahead of the two sides meeting at Jubilee Stadium this Saturday, Turnbull said it hadn't been a topic of discussion, at least not yet.
“It hasn't [come up],” he said. “It's something that if we need additional motivation, then we can use that. But we look at it as the same coach but a very different squad. [The] chief ‘villain’, our friend Casey Dumont not being there helps that.
“But for us, it's who's the next opponent. It just so happens to be a team that plays in blue and yellow, and they play like this. Obviously, it was disappointing to bow out when we did last year, more so than how we bowed out. But [Saturday is] a chance for three points. So always take it a week at a time. Doesn't matter who's in front of us. It's come up with a game plan that we believe can win and get after it.”
Turnbull was on media duties in place of Hopkins, who has been absent from Victory training this week after returning to Britain to deal with a personal matter but who is scheduled to fly back into Australia on Friday and be in the dugout the following day.
He will be overseeing a side that sits second in the A-League Women after its opening three rounds, bouncing back from a round two defeat to crosstown rivals Melbourne City with a thumping 4-1 win over Western United last week, propelled by a hattrick from newly called Matilda and league top-scorer Emily Gielnik. That triumph represented a first-ever win against their Green and Black rivals for Victory, albeit Turnbull played that down too.
One thing the assistant would hang his hat on, however, was the strength in continuity that his side would bring into this weekend, and what kind of advantage that could be.
The Mariners have lost eight of the 15 players that took the field in last year's final, with shootout hero Dumont likely to join up with new side Glory soon following the end of Hawthorn’s AFLW season. Victory, for their part, has lost five players from their side that day, including one, Jess Nash, to the Mariners. But while two of their retained players – Paige Zois and Lia Privitelli – are out with long-term injuries and won’t feature on Saturday afternoon, they will also be able to call upon Gielnik this time around, with the striker missing last season’s shootout showdown after picking up an injury in camp with the Matildas.
“I think the majority of our group being here last year and playing regularly is an advantage,” Turnbull said. “We've changed [the starting XI] from the first game, but the last two games have been the same starting lineup. So if we decide to go with that again, there's real continuity between players, forming partnerships. We're in a better physical position than we were a year ago at this point in the season, too.
“We're happy with where we're at and we're looking forward to testing ourselves against a good opponent.”
“We expect [the Mariners are] going to be a good team. They're well-organised and well-coached. Something that I really respect about them is their ability to change shapes from week to week and even within games. And that makes preparation just that little bit harder. That's an advantage that they have. We expect them to be fluid in what they bring. Principally, they are quite similar, we feel, across whatever shape they play. We looked at that today, we looked at some what-ifs. So we feel like we've covered off as much as we can.
“But the focus will be on us, though. If we can mentally be right, physically bring the level of intensity we bought last week, and put away our chances when they present themselves, then I feel pretty confident.”
Turnbull said that there were no fitness issues arising out of the Western win that the side was dealing with and that scholarship player Jess Young had been signed off as available for selection. Long-term absences Zois, Privitelli, and Lydia Williams continue to work towards returns.
Gielnik and Alex Chidiac – as well as the Mariners Nash and Isabel Gomez – will also enter Saturday’s game as members of the 36-player squad named by caretaker coach Tom Sermanni for the Matildas looming four-game window across late November and early December. The national team boss also confirmed at that squad announcement that Football Australia had submitted all the necessary paperwork for Kayla Morrison to switch her eligibility to Australia, with it now sitting in FIFA’s hands to sign off on the move.
Kayla's been hoping to gain national team selection for a while,” Turnbull said. “There's nothing more that we can do to accelerate that or ourselves. By the sounds of it, Football Australia is keen to have her involved as soon as possible. People are pushing her case. It's one of those that sits with FIFA, which can happen very quickly or it can take a while.
“As soon as they give her the green light, she's ready to go.”