Wellington Phoenix coach Ricki Herbert has applauded his players for digging in to beat Perth Glory, saying it was a quality response to a midweek mauling by Brisbane.
The New Zealanders saw their 24-match unbeaten run at Westpac Stadium come to grinding halt on Wednesday night as the in-form Roar smashed them 4-1.
It continued a poor run of form for the Phoenix, considered an early-season title favourite, as they had won just one of the previous eight games before travelling west to take on the similarly out-of-form Perth Glory.
But powered by a spectacular Tim Brown strike in just the 42nd second of Sunday’s game, Wellington held on for a 1-0 win over Perth, their first-ever win at nib Stadium and the team’s first away victory this season.
“We had a tough week and we’ve worked hard and the players have really responded well,” Herbert said.
“It wasn’t about getting beaten at home, it was about the way we got beaten.”
“That’s certainly not the resemblance of my types of teams or my types of players.”
“I think that we copped something that we shouldn’t have done, so it was healthy to jump on a plane and it’s a decent way to come across here and maximise it by taking three pretty valuable points home with us.”
Wellington had goalkeeper Mark Paston to thank, though, for denying Perth on two occasions as Michael Baird and Jamie Coyne were released clear at goal.
But aside from those two moments, it was a much-improved Wellington defensive performance across the whole 90 minutes, striker Chris Greenacre saying the team had to dig deep having made the long trek from New Zealand on top of a four-day break.
“It’s been a painful few days after the result midweek and I think the boys were thankful of the quick turnaround,” Greenacre said.
“I think the journey and all that kind of stuff kind of went out the window.”
“We knew we had to come here and get a result, we knew we had to dig in deep and if we didn’t get a result we needed to put in a good performance today, a hard working solid performance and I think we did that.”
Greenacre said Brown had been subjected to some good-natured ribbing for his crossed-arms celebration, but their coach said the early wonder-strike was just what the doctor ordered after the loss to Brisbane.
“It was a great strike from Tim wasn’t it.”
“I wouldn’t say that was in the script, but we’ll take it. I’m sure you’re not going to get a better one probably through the year, but it got the momentum going and the confidence from that kind of stemmed.”
“We had to put (up some) strong resilience and it worked very well for us today.”
“We worked hard, a lot harder than what we’ve seen for the last couple of weeks and we’ve got something from it which was pleasing.”
