Bentleigh Greens coach John Anastasiadis was understandably disappointed to have the game against Ballarat postponed due to lighting and weather, and is concerned that his team may be underdone going forward.
Torrential rain and lightning around Kingston Heath forced the floodlight failure on Saturday night, and the referees made the call to postpone the game half an hour after the scheduled kickoff time.
Anastasiadis’ side were well prepared to play the fixture, and he ultimately apologised to Ballarat who had to travel all the way to the south east of Melbourne.
“100% we were fully prepared and the boys were really pumped up for it, wanted a good start to the season,” Anastasiadis said.
“We knew we were playing Ballarat, an unknown quantity at the moment, we don’t know much about them which is scary at times so it would have been interesting to see what we would’ve been up against.
“I feel a bit sorry for Ballarat also because they’ve travelled all this distance and unfortunately things are out of our hands.
“I’ll apologise on behalf of the club to Ballarat and to everyone involved but unfortunately it’s machines that we really couldn’t do anything about.
“This is the first time [the floodlights have failed] and I don’t know what’s happened but we got to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
With every other team getting their National Premier League campaigns underway on the weekend, not playing this fixture has left Bentleigh and Ballarat at a disadvantage, and Anastasiadis will be intensifying training this week in order to compensate for the lack of match practice.
“We got a cup game next week so in a way it’s not too bad,” he said.
“In actual fact we’ll be a week behind everyone however we’ll ramp it up this week with some heavy training and get them ready for their next game which is the cup game against St. Kilda, and the next game against Northcote.”
Ultimately the club want to make amends for losing the VPL Grand Final last year to Northcote City, and Anastasiadis believes that burning desire will drive the club to be top dogs this season.
“When you start a season you always see yourself as high as possible and it burns the boys inside that last year they missed out on winning the championship or the final by just a single goal and all the shenanigans that went on during the game,” he said.
“They were really disappointed and this year they want to go one step better I presume.”