Melbourne Heart coach John van ‘t Schip was far from pleased with his side’s 3-2 victory over North Queensland on Wednesday night, but was very happy to come away from a testing fortnight undefeated.
The Heart were dominated by the Fury for large portions of the first half with the home side taking a deserved 1-0 lead into half-time courtesy of a lucky Dyron Daal goal.
The visitors were a different side after the break with three goals in 15 minutes to substitute Eli Babalj, Gerald Sibon and Adrian Zahra turning the game on its head.
North Queensland pulled a goal back late, but the Heart held on for their fifth win of the season, although van ‘t Schip wasn’t at all happy with his side’s first half.
“I think if you look at the first half it was not good, the tempo we played was too slow, we were a step behind defensively in the first half and to be honest we were also a little bit lucky that we didn’t go into the dressing room 2-0 behind,” he said on Thursday morning.
“But we had a good talk in the dressing room, we changed Gerald (Sibon) with Nick (Kalmar) and Eli (Babalj) came on in the position of Gerald and already in the last few minutes of the first half we started to play a little bit more of what we can do.”
“And in the second half we started very well, we were much more aggressive, we also said to each other ‘this game boys we can easily win if we just get to a level’. We just have to be more aggressive, more alert and that’s what happened in the second half.”
“If you looked at the match overall we deserved to win but I think there are a lot of points where we have to improve.”
The Heart played three matches in three states over the past 10 days and picked up a very handy seven points from their trips to Newcastle, Perth and North Queensland.
“Very important result of course and after the three away trips that we’ve done now, we got a very good result, seven points and no injuries so that’s a good sign as well,” van ‘t Schip said.
“Players coming back, no injuries in the last three games and seven points, it’s very good and up to the next game at home.”
It doesn’t get any easier for the Heart, with their next assignment against the table-topping Brisbane Roar at AAMI Park on Sunday.
The last time the two sides met, the Roar handed the Heart a 4-0 thumping, but since then van ‘t Schip’s men are undefeated and he admitted the unscheduled two-week break as a result of the AFL Grand Final Replay has paid dividends for his team.
“It’s not that in one game everything is going to be decided, it’s for us again another game and a good challenge and a chance to see how far we are … I think if you look back to the game we played there and you’ve seen how we played in the meantime, we really made little steps and now together it’s a big step,” he said.
“It’s very interesting to see how we can play on Sunday against the team that at this moment is playing the best football in the league.”
“Everyone knows losing is not nice and losing 4-0 is not good at all so we had a good talk and we had maybe the luck that we had two weeks of preparation.”
“At first I thought it would be better to have played after a week but when they postponed that AFL game another week, we had to wait and we had two weeks that we could train very well and we had two, three changes in the team and they did very well in the game against Victory too, so with that in mind and the game coming up we kept on going and we grew as a squad.”
