It was a hard fought result in the end as a solitary strike from Tyson Holmes at the death enough to send South Melbourne to the Semi-Finals, the sense of relief on coach Chris Taylor’s face evident after the match.
Taylor had seen his side fail to grind out results or even keep a clean sheet up until last weekend so the South Melbourne coach was happy to see everything come together when it mattered most.
“Where we’ve come a long way, we’ve had two clean sheets last week and this week which we’ve failed to do since I’ve been at the club,” he said.
“That’s a team performance. We battled hard and got the goal at the end but we couldn’t grind out a result like that 6 or 7 weeks ago so it just shows how far we’ve come.
The reward for success in this Elimination Final is a trip to Knights Stadium, and Taylor seemed confident that their opponents would not fancy facing them.
“[Melbourne] Knights have had a great season and they’re a passionate lot down there and playing them on their turf is going to be very very difficult. I don’t think they’ll want to play us either. I think it’s a good game for both clubs, we’ll go to it the same attitude that we had tonight,” he said.
One thing South Melbourne have on their side is momentum with the club losing one of their last nine matches.
The 4-0 drubbing of Port Melbourne showed they certainly have goals in them, and while they only had the goal from Holmes to shout about in this match, they showed that they are capable of creating chances.
Taylor’s feet are planted firmly on the ground though, as he remained coy as to his side’s chances of going all the way to the Grand Final.
“When you sneak into 4th and 5th like us and Green Gully anything’s a bonus,” he said.
“We’re out there to enjoy it, we’ve not necessarily over achieved this year but we’ve shown that we could be a force to be reckoned with and we just want to enjoy what we’re doing.
“The specific approach is just to go out there and win the game. I don’t think we have to change the way we play, maybe there’s a couple areas that we need tying up and focus on and obviously look at their strengths and weaknesses, but all in all it is a good group that we’ve got and it’s just the momentum now we want to carry it forward each week.”