Glory ALW Head Coach Stephen Peters feels that the pain of last weekend’s last-gasp defeat to Melbourne Victory will serve to fire his charges up for Sunday’s home clash with Adelaide United (kick-off at 5pm, tickets available HERE).
View his full pre-match media conference HERE
The women in purple looked set to secure a well-deserved point against the high-flying navy-and-whites until Alana Murphy found the net from long range deep in stoppage-time.
And having taken plenty of positives from the performance, Peters believes that his side can bounce back at the expense of a Reds outfit seeking its fourth win of the season.
“The effort has definitely been there and we’ve been concentrating for long periods, ” he said.
“It’s just about concentrating on the fine details to make sure we convert those efforts into points.
“Obviously we’ve been getting better in terms of how many minutes we’re competitive for in matches, but to lose in the 92nd minute, that one stung.
“We’ve got to work harder to not let that repeat itself.
“The intensity is there, we’ve just got to make sure that we’re alert in the key moments and we need to help the players identify what those key moments are… and make sure that they’re switched on at all times.
“We’re getting closer on that and I’ve said it a few times; it’s a work in progress.”
Peters, however, is under no illusions as to the challenge that Adelaide will pose as they look to continue their strong start to the campaign.
“They’re a very well structured side that play a very structured, possession-based game and Fiona Worts is a fantastic goalscorer for them,” he said.
“But each team we play, they’ve all got a pretty good striker, so the good thing is that we have a similar preparation for that each week.
“The players obviously have different characteristics, but our prep is pretty similar.”
The Victory game was Glory’s first ALW fixture at the Sam Kerr Football Centre and Peters is determined to give the club’s Members and fans something to celebrate this weekend.
“It is a cliche, but this week we really do have to concentrate on ourselves,” he said.
“I think if we get our game right, then we put ourselves in every contest.
“Every time we went forward [against Victory], we got bums off seats to cheer us, so we want to create more of those moments for the fans to get behind.
“That way it hopefully lifts the players as well.
“We really wanted to put on a good show in our first ALW game there and obviously getting beaten in the last minute took the oxygen out of that.
“But hopefully the fans saw that we were very much putting in a huge effort, playing for the shirt and playing for each other and hopefully we can get the three points this week.”
In terms of early team news, meanwhile, the Head Coach revealed that he has a number of injury headaches to contend with.
“We have a couple of 50-50 ones and we haven’t got the scans back for them yet,” he said.
“But Sarah O’Donoghue looks like she’ll miss a bit of football which is really disappointing for her as she’s done a tremendous job to date.”
The Reds will venture over the border off the back of a 2-0 victory over Newcastle which took their points tally for the campaign to nine.
Adrian Stenta’s side have also accounted for Western Sydney Wanderers and Canberra United, with English striker Worts scoring eight of their goals and Emily Condon chipping in with two.
Their two defeats both came at home, against Melbourne Victory on opening day and Wellington Phoenix in Round Four.
The South Australians have won on two of their last four visits to Perth, but last season’s corresponding fixture saw Glory secure a 2-1 victory courtesy of goals from Grace Jale and Susan Phonsongkham.
Overall against the Reds, Glory have enjoyed 14 wins to ten.
Match Details
Ninja A-League 2024/25 Season Round 6
Perth Glory v Adelaide United
Sam Kerr Football Centre
Sunday 15 December 2024
Kick-off: 5:00pm
(picture courtesy of Mark Francesca)
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