Adelaide United coach Aurelio Vidmar was pleased with his side’s performance after they came away with a 1-1 draw against Central Coast in trial match on Thursday afternoon.
The Reds named a full-strength team as the players stepped up their preparations for next week’s AFC Champions League showdown against Sanfrecce Hiroshima. Only captain Travis Dodd, who was rested, was missing from the same XI that took to the field in the past two ACL matches.
Argentinean Marcos Flores gave the Reds the lead in the 24th minutes, but the Mariners hit back through Matt Simon seven minutes later to level the scores.
There was no further addition to the scoreline as Vidmar made a host of changes throughout the second half with only Cassio playing a full game.
“It was ok. Obviously it was very difficult conditions playing at 2pm, the tempo was a bit slow, but that was typical of the conditions, so I was reasonably pleased with the hit out,” Vidmar said.
“In the second half we played most of the players that haven’t had much game time, so that was a good hit out for them, so I was pretty pleased with that.”
“We needed the run. We still want to do that (play games) because there’s a fortnight between games … and we thought after having an internal trial, which we’ve done, we’d give them (the players) a different stimulus and we’re thankful for Arnie (Graham Arnold) and the Central Coast for coming down here to give us a hit out, and it was a good hit out.”
“For us it’s about moving forward, we’re happy where we are at the moment but it’s really important that we get a win on Wednesday night just to give us that little bit more of a buffer.”
Meanwhile, new Mariners coach Graham Arnold liked what he saw and took plenty out of the match.
“I’ve only had a couple of weeks with them, that was the first game we’ve had, getting a lot of young players in, having a look at some players and we’ve worked a little bit on our defensive shape, but overall I was very happy,” said Arnold.
