Melbourne Heart Youth coach Joe Palatsides has conceded that his side’s punishing fixture list so far this season has taken a toll on the squad, among other factors.
Having started the season with away wins in Perth and Brisbane, Heart have since failed to win a game in the National Youth League, and were thrashed 4-1 by Adelaide United in their first home game of the season.
Palatsides admitted that the constant travel has affected his side’s ability to churn out consistent performances, and that it has led to a decline in their fortunes.
“The youth team’s a funny type of a team,” Palatsides said.
“We have dropped [our level], there’s no doubt about that and I don’t know how much those road trips have taken [out of us].
“We’ve had five away trips straight off the top so travelling on the day and playing in the heat of Perth and Brisbane, and even Sydney last week has taken it’s toll there’s no doubt about it.”
Palatsides also put the recent dip in performances down to various issues a youth side has to contend with, especially with regards to training.
“You don’t really get the youth team all week to train with,” he said.
“They’re required with the senior team and with schooling involved, so we don’t get them often as we probably like as a group.
“There’s little aspects that we’d like to work on that we can’t, so hopefully now with the school holidays coming up we’ll keep them a lot more regularly and we’ll be able to work on a few different things.”
Palatsides felt it was a deserved win for Adelaide, given their superiority in the first half, coupled with Heart’s inability to convert their chances after the break.
“Even though we created more chances in the second half we couldn’t capitalise on it, whereas they went down the other end two or three times and scored two goals,” he said.
“I think Adelaide played really well in the first half and we didn’t defend in the manner that we wanted to.
“We gave them way too much space and way too much time, and a good team like that created some good opportunities.
“At the end of the day they did enough to beat us and based on that first half performance, they got a deserved three points.”