Perth Glory coach Kenny Lowe continues to be amazed by the gritty determination of his side to once again bounce back from the cusp of defeat and salvage a result.
Glory fought back from two goals down with 14 minutes left on the clock to secure a 3-3 draw against Melbourne Victory in an entertaining encounter at nib Stadium on Sunday night.
It was the sixth time this season Glory has come from behind to either win or draw a match in the closing stages and Lowe’s side sits four points clear at the top of the Hyundai A-League as reward for their gallant efforts.
Lowe joked after the match he needed a dictionary to find some new words to describe his team’s fighting qualities.
“I keep using character and blue collar…in any walk of life you’ve got a bit of adversity and it’s how you deal with that,” Lowe said.
“You don’t look at people when everything’s plain sailing, you don’t look at people when they’re at the top of their game. You look at people when they’ve got a little bit of pain and I’ll tell you what – our lads tick every single box, every single time.
“I said at half-time ‘we like being behind’ because we fight back and we come back and it proved true again. I had in mind that they wouldn’t score another goal though…but I’ll take the draw.”
The English-born manager said his players were instilled with belief at half-time of emerging triumphant at the final whistle despite trailing 2-1 and all the momentum resting with Kevin Muscat’s Victory.
“We embrace what we are, we understand what we are, we know that even when we’re down we’re not down, only the scoreboard tells us we’re down,” Lowe said.
“Our players don’t feel down, they don’t look down, they don’t act down, they don’t play down. They’ve just got change the score on the board, which they’ve done again.”
The fightback was soured by a serious ankle injury to Chris Harold and Lowe feared the in-form winger could be sidelined for an extended period.
Exciting youngster Danny De Silva is expected to be fit for Glory’s next game against Sydney FC at home on February 7 after falling ill during the warm-up.
Ruben Zadkovich came into the starting XI for De Silva just before kick-off despite only training once in the past three weeks, according to Lowe, as he continues to battle a back complaint which has restricted his season to just eight A-League and two Westfield FFA Cup appearances.
