Green Gully coach Bob Stojcevski was pleased with his side’s opening result of the season, but not the performance.
Despite a commanding 4-1 victory over Northcote City, which was made easier by a 35th minute red card to City’s Jason Hayne, the Cavaliers’ mentor described his side’s performance as “rusty” on the ball.
“Results wise it’s a good start, in terms of how we played there’s lots of room for improvement.
“I was expecting us to be rusty with such a new squad, our latest signing was two weeks ago, but it’s pleasing when you don’t play such a fantastic game but still get a great result.
“i was pleased with the effort in terms of how we held our shape, not necessarily how we played with quality in terms of when we had the ball.
Many of the key players in the win, including goal-scorers Mikola Markovski and Matthew Breeze, are new additions to the squad.
With close to 15 new signings, Gully had one of the NPL’s highest turnover of playing staff in the off-season, with Stojcevski alluding that each player was sought out because of their team attitude and cultural fit to assist the existing squad members.
“It [recruitment] started with the type of signings we actually made. We tried to bring in good characters, players that work for each other, work for the team, they’re pretty much selfless in their approach towards each other, and that was key for me, just getting the right character there,” he said.
“Once you get the right character then it’s about getting the combinations in terms of how we play and where we move on the field, so that’ll come with time, and i don’t expect it to be in Round 1.
“Certainly it’ll take about five or six weeks before we get out football flow-on, but in terms of everything else, all the other aspects, you can see on the park they really work hard for each other and back each other really well, so that’s pleasing to me.”
With one of the leakiest defences last season, inconsistency plagued Gully’s campaign, but Stojcevski denied that defence was a sole focus in pre-season, adamant that the Cavaliers would defend from the front in 2015.
“Our intention is to go out and win every game that we play – we never talk about sitting back, defending, tucking people back,” he said.
“We do use a defensive structure when we don’t have the ball, but certainly when we get the ball, you can see we stretch people out, we try to play, we try to get goals, and that’s been the focus of all our training sessions, not trying to be defensive minded.
“We want to win games, we don’t want to just play for a draw.”