Brisbane Roar captain Matt Smith admitted Saturday night’s 2-2 draw with Melbourne Victory felt more like a loss after they failed to unlock an opponent that played the final 53 minutes with nine men.
The visitors were ahead inside the first six minutes after Victory goalkeeper Ante Covic was sent off for conceding a penalty to Besart Berisha in the first 60 seconds, and then found themselves with a two-man advantage after Matthew Foschini was red-carded in the 37th minute.
But the hosts, having equalised and then gone ahead through Archie Thompson, only to then concede a leveller to Thomas Broich – all in the first 26 minutes – fought on bravely to rescue a point.
According to Smith, the result was bitterly disappointing even though it extended their unbeaten run to 33 matches.
“Well walking into the change room it certainly feels like a loss and the boys are very, very disappointed in there,” Smith said.
“They’re very, very upset that we didn’t get the three points and take advantage of the 10 men but a few of them said okay well we move on to next week (against Wellington Phoenix) and that’s all that we can do.”
Postecoglou was obviously disappointed not to have taken all three points, the draw the first time this season the defending champions haven’t won, and he put the performance down to not being ‘clever’ enough on the night.
“It was a weird old night, a crazy old night actually, and it was a bit chaotic in the first half and a little bit frustrating in the second half,” Postecoglou said.
“From our point of view (there’s) plenty to work on from there but credit to them they fought really hard to get what they needed and from our point of view as I said it was just a really hard night to sort of analyse a game because it was just a little bit all over the place.”
“We still should be clever enough to be able to unlock that.”
“We really needed to just be a little bit more positive but I just thought, with everything that was happening in the first half, we lost our composure a little bit and we struggled to regain it for the rest of the night to be fair.”
“It’s really important during that time, as I said to the players at half-time, it’s just to keep a clear head and not get involved and I thought we got involved too much in stuff that doesn’t really fit in with what we do.”
But Postecoglou was pleased to at least be returning to Brisbane with a point considering the below-par performance.
“I think that just comes back to the first half and not having a clear head as to what we needed to do,” Postecoglou added.
“That’s football and we’re not the perfect team, we’re far from it and as I keep saying we need to keep improving and we’ll keep improving and keep getting better as a football team and learning lessons along the way.”
“But I’ve always found it more fruitful when you learn lessons and you don’t lose, I like it that way.”
