Green Gully player-coach Jeffrey Fleming was unsurprisingly disappointed with the Cavaliers’ 1-0 away loss to Dandenong Thunder, but took plenty of positives from his side’s performance.
The Cavaliers looked in control for the bulk of the match but were unable to capitalise on their chances in front of goal despite strong play from attackers Andy Vargas and Osagie Ederaro who in tandem, worked tirelessly throughout the contest.
“I thought we controlled the game. In the first half when they had 11 men we should’ve been two-nil up,” Fleming said.
“They went down to ten men and it probably worked against us so I think we have to keep building from that and keep learning what we did well today.
“We just cant let teams into games by giving them a goal because it gets their heads up and makes it hard for us to come back.”
Fleming also hinted at his side’s ambition to win the league and maintains that the loss is merely a blip in what is a long National Premier League season.
“I think we’ve shown in the last two weeks how we’re going to fare, I think we’re going to do well,” he said.
“We play some good football, at the end of the day you’ve got to take your chances, you don’t take your chances, you get punished. That’s for any team, young or old.
“There’s no reason why we’d be playing if we weren’t in it to win it but we understand it’s different this year with no finals, you’ve got to keep picking up points every week.”
The experienced midfielder will look to review the match, and help improve on the areas that need work but reiterated that his side needs to capitalise on their chances if they are to be successful.
“I think you [need to] take your chances, put teams away and you don’t let them back in the game.
“The team that goes down to ten men are always going to defend well and will look to catch a team on the counter attack and that’s what happened to us today, and we got punished with a bit of a sucker-punch.
“It’s really disappointing. We’ll have to review it and look at what we could’ve done better and where we went wrong and build to next week but I’m not disappointed in the performance, it’s just more the result that was disappointing.
“You’ve always got to be conscious of the counter-attack. They got half a chance and finished it and that was the difference today, we had our chances and didn’t take them.”
The Cavaliers welcome a highly fancied South Melbourne outfit to Green Gully Reserve on Saturday afternoon with kick-off scheduled for 3:00pm.