Midfielder Grant Brebner believes a switch of focus to Saturday night’s grand final rematch against SydneyFC is the perfect antidote to the pain stemming from the Victory’s loss to the Heart in the inaugural Melbourne derby.
Speaking at a clinic at Monash University on Tuesday, Brebner confessed to still feeling flat about the 2-1 loss to the competition newcomers four days after the event.
“Everybody was hurting, the management, the players, the fans, everybody was hurting,” Brebner said.
“Nobody wanted to lose that game and I think (skipper) Kevin (Muscat) used the quote it was ‘un-Victory-like’ and I can only reinforce that.”
“We’ve set standards over the course of the A-League and we were certainly way below them on the weekend.”
“Sydney is now the second-biggest game that Melbourne can come up against so we’ll now try to put the result to bed and kick on from here.”
Brebner said there was no single cause for last Friday’s performance and he believes the Victory have been playing better than recent results – which include three scoreless draws in the lead-up to the derby – suggest.
“It was just one of those games, we had an off night,” he said.
“We’ve actually played well this season and the results probably haven’t reflected that in recent weeks.”
“But certainly there’s no excuse for what happened on Friday night and I can probably say that this weekend it certainly won’t be the same performance.”
Meanwhile Brebner – who came on as a substitute last Friday after missing the club’s previous fixture in Newcastle because of a broken toe – said he had no complaints about the two-match penalty handed to Heart striker Gerald Sibon.
“He copped my ankle and I couldn’t comment on it, to be fair, but if the match review panel deemed fit to give him two weeks then it must have been merited,” said Brebner.
“If he had copped my other side, on my toes, it probably would have been a bit worse but he got my other foot so it wasn’t too bad.”
“I actually can’t honestly remember it because I was unfairly booked for another challenge at the same time.”
“It was the heat of the moment and there were tackles going in everywhere on the night and … I was probably more concerned about my own tackle than what was going on in the little shmackle after it.”
