Adelaide United Head Coach, Carl Veart, has spoken from New Zealand ahead of his side’s Round 1 match against Wellington Phoenix.
After a long commute across the ditch via Sydney, the Reds settled into their quarters in preparation for their season opener with Veart discussing Sunday afternoon’s fixture.
Final pre-season thoughts:
“It’s always good to get into the games.
“As you say, pre-season can be long and boring, but over the pre-season I’ve been very happy with the way the boys have tracked along and we’re very eager to get out and see how we match up (against Wellington) tomorrow.
“It’s always difficult for us in pre-season just with the quality (and number) of games that we can get.
“I’m very happy with the performance of the boys and when we’re looking at data, we’ve improved a lot compared to where we were this time last year.
“So hopefully we can get a lot better start to the season than what we did last year.”
Goodwin’s inclusion:
“(Goodwin) will definitely play tomorrow.
“It’s a very similar pre-season for him as it was last year.
“He didn’t do any pre-season last year with us and started with the (A-League) games and then you look at the season that he had last year – it was the best season that he’s ever had for the club.
“So hopefully that can repeat again this year.
“We’ve always said from the beginning from when he got this injury that the (aim was) getting ready for Round 1.
“We weren’t worried about any of their pre-season games.
“We know that the quality that he’s got and our job was to get him ready for Round 1 and we’ve done that and and he’s fit to go.”
Nix unknowns:
“(Wellington are) a little bit unknown to us.
“They’ve got five or six new players in their starting eleven from last year, some new foreigners that no one sort of knows anything too much about.
“We’re prepared (for them to) play the same sort of style (as last season), that’s what we’re expecting and that’s what we’ve prepared for.
“We’ll just have to wait and see how it pans out tomorrow.”
Training in Wellington:
“It was a long trip yesterday.
“We trained early yesterday morning in Adelaide and then got into Wellington last night at midnight.
“So it’s more or less just to get some the rubbish out of the players legs from the long travel and just freshen them up a little bit.”
