Melbourne City Women’s coach Joe Montemurro has lauded his players for a record-breaking campaign that landed the club’s first piece of major silverware.
In embarking on a winning run of 10 consecutive games, overtaking the W-League’s record point tally of 29, the side raced to the Premiership on first attempt with two games left to play.
The 46-year-old praised his squad’s ability to live up to early expectations with consistently dominant performances throughout the season.
“Magnificent, I think they’re a special bunch of girls, they really are,” Montemurro said.
“From attitude, from character, from football to professionalism they’ve been absolutely fantastic and they’re the ones they deserve it, they’ve done all the hard work.”
The game that eventually got the side over the line was a hard fought, 1-0 win against Brisbane on the Gold Coast.
Kim Little’s early strike was enough to see off the Roar, albeit the hosts fought hard for an equaliser with a finals chance on the line.
While it wasn’t City’s most clinical showing, the result marked another clean sheet in a professional performance that has become the minimum for the side in 2015.
“They pushed numbers forward, which made it four v four so every time in transition we just had to be careful that we had numbers back,” he said.
“The time they got us was on the right hand side where I think one of our wide players didn’t track back, so it was just a matter of being professional and disciplined all the way through.
“We always knew it was going to be a hard game, they’re playing at home, they’re fighting for dear life, they’re fighting for survival in the finals series so it was going to be very difficult.”
While the players have been tested from a tactical perspective by their coach in recent weeks, one challenge still evading the side has been its ability to claw back a deficit, having never conceded an opening goal in its history.
However, Montemurro is confident the side’s mentality and professionalism will see it through any situation as it prepares for a potential season clean sweep and finals series.
“A lot of the training is based on high standards, a lot of the training is based on us being three v two in defence and being underloaded or overloaded in scenarios, so we’re trying to create the worst case scenarios,” he said.
“As you saw, the last couple of weeks we played three at the back which is to test us just to see what we could do with different systems and different structures.
“The beauty of this group is that they’re able to adjust because tactically they’re smart and understand the situation, but also we’ve got the weapons to finish the game off.
“Obviously we’re happy to go all the way but we’re going to be smart too and building a good attitude going into finals, finals is knockout football so anything could happen.”