Perth Glory veteran Jamie Harnwell says there’s no need for crisis meetings, despite the club having only won once in nine matches, incurring the wrath of owner Tony Sage along the way.
Although, the Glory went into last week’s disappointing 1-0 loss to the Fury on a four-match unbeaten run, the club’s struggled to turn draws into wins over the past month with the exception of a quality 2-0 victory over Sydney at home.
But an exceptionally disappointing first half against North Queensland, where the inaccurate Fury enjoyed 15 shots at goal to one prompted an angry response from Sage over the weekend.
In a passionate plea to his players, the owner said he could walk away from the game if the Glory didn’t make the finals this season after the mining magnate invested heavily in the squad and turned it, on paper, into one of the best in the competition.
Having been at the club for its entire Hyundai A-League history, a period where the former NSL powerhouse hasn’t made the finals, Harnwell knows more than a thing or two about tough periods.
But the 32-year-old is adamant the side can put the North Queensland game behind it and hit back strongly when the Glory travel to the Gold Coast on Sunday.
“I think Tony had every right to probably come out and say that,” Harnwell said when asked how the player’s reacted to Sage’s comments over the weekend.
“He’s the owner of the club, he puts the money in and I don’t think anyone in the team was happy with the first-half performance.”
“But it’s probably the only time this year that you could really criticises us for that. We’ve been in every game and we probably still were in that game on that weekend.”
“So, you know I don’t think there’s any sort of call for crisis meetings or something like perhaps we did last year,” he said.
Harnwell denied the side showed a lack of urgency or effort against the Fury.
“I don’t think anyone came off the pitch last week having not given a hundred percent despite what some people have commented on,” he said.
“I think the Fury were just up for every ball that dropped, they were battling, they pushed up really high and didn’t allow us any time or space to really play the ball.”
“So that made it difficult for us and we had to sort of change things a bit in the second half.”
“Against Gold Coast, it might be a little bit different. They play football themselves and they probably give the opposition a bit more space than the Fury like to, so the game will be different.”
“We’ve still got to do better. The things we talked about to do that we’ll sort of keep in house (but) we’ll make sure we work on those and ensure that sort of thing, hopefully it doesn’t happen again.”
In just his second match since coming back from a two-month absence with a knee injury, Harnwell gave the Glory some spark up front against the Fury, after the club lost striker Branko Jelic to an ankle injury.
Jelic looks likely to miss this week as well, despite training on Wednesday morning but Harnwell is uncertain whether he quite has the fitness to play a full game.
However, central defender Chris Coyne looks to have recovered from a jarred back that kept him out for two matches.
