Wellington’s road-trip of a season is about to hit its fourth “home” venue – but the top six still beckons, writes Tom Smithies
It’s the statistic which shows up Wellington’s plight – and underlines the remarkable way their Isuzue UTE A-League campaign has stayed on track.
More than a third of the way through the season, Phoenix will by the end of the week have played their “home” games at more venues than they have their away games.
The fact Ufuk Talay’s team will go fourth with victory over Brisbane Roar at Leichhardt Oval on Wednesday night reinforces the extent to which their juggling act of a season has so far been successful.
For most of the past two and a half years, Phoenix have been forced to base themselves in NSW thanks to border restrictions, but the financial realities of the COVID landscape have made this campaign the toughest.
Though Talay joked that “there’s always hope”, current quarantine requirements in New Zealand are unlikely to lift before the end of the season.
As well as three games at their nominal “home from home” at Wollongong Stadium, Phoenix have already played home games at Jubilee Stadium and Campbelltown Stadium.
Now games at Leichhardt against Brisbane (on Wednesday) and Sydney FC (on Saturday) will continue their road trip of a season – though Talay believes he can see silver linings in the overall cloud.
Having based themselves in Chatswood, in north Sydney, for this season, in order to access better training facilities, Phoenix face a trip of two hours to Wollongong for their “home” games there – but rather less for some of the other venues used this season.
The dislocation could be a handy excuse, but that’s not a message Talay wants his players to hear.
“We always speak with the players about what we can control and that’s the football that we play,” Talay said. “At the end of the day, we had we didn’t have a crowd (at all for commercial reasons) at Wollongong against Melbourne Victory, but the only thing we can control is our performance on the park.
“I don’t want to say the boys have become used to it, but they understand the situation that we’re in. And for me, we’ve got a young group that want to play football, which is a great thing for me, and at the same time, they want to have success.
“(My job) is to make sure that they’re in the right frame of mind, and they focus to go out there and do their job. I’d love to be back in New Zealand; you know, when you play an away game and you don’t get the result that you want, you want to come home and play in front of your fans, and they lift you and they give you that extra boost that you need.
“But unfortunately, we don’t have that. So we’ll keep the boys focused on the task at hand and that’s to make the final series at the end of the season.”
“At the moment I think we’re just trying to get venues that are closer to where we’re staying and do less traveling in New South Wales. For us a venue is a venue – as long as the pitch is nice and it’s playable, I think the boys will be happy.”
