It’s not every day you get to celebrate your 50th Hyundai A-League appearance with a 6-0 thrashing but that’s exactly what transpired for Wellington’s Tony Lochhead last weekend as his club enjoyed a day out against the Gold Coast.
It’s not every day you get to celebrate your 50th Hyundai A-League appearance with a 6-0 thrashing but that’s exactly what transpired for Wellington’s Tony Lochhead last weekend as his club enjoyed a day out against the Gold Coast.
The emphatic win ended the Phoenix’s record run of six consecutive draws and lifted them to seventh on the table with a game in hand.
Now the fullback is keen to make sure the winning run continues, starting against league leaders Sydney on Sunday.
“In the past we haven’t been able to back up wins. If we can get a bit of a roll going and keep everyone-s confidence up hopefully we’ll get a few,” Lochhead said on Thursday.
The match at the Sydney Football Stadium is the first of three games in seven days for the New Zealand side, which plays the Newcastle Jets midweek before another home clash with Perth Glory on November 8.
“It’s going to be pretty flat out and we probably won’t have too much time to think about it. It’s probably a good time to have hit our straps. Hopefully we can take advantage of it.”
One thing is guaranteed after last weekend’s performance at Westpac Stadium and that is Sydney won’t be taking them lightly, despite winning the earlier encounter between the two sides 2-0.
“I thought (last time) we were defensively all right we just didn’t have anything going on in that game.”
“We were sort of holding them off and it was only a matter of time before they were going to score against us. We were just soaking up the pressure,” Lochhead admitted.
“Hopefully we’ve still got some goals saved up for them. That’s been our weakness in the past, we haven’t been scoring goals.”
“We are working pretty hard. I feel we’re pretty tight at the back at the moment so if we can just keep playing the way we’ve been playing we should be all right.”
The All Whites defender felt confidence in the team had grown since that fourth round match in August.
“We’re working pretty hard here. The way we are playing as a group is good and I just hope that we can make these performances count.”
“The six draws in a row, we need to turn those (kinds of results) into wins.”
“Hopefully we can get six wins in a row. That would be nice.”
