Adelaide United Head Coach Theo Tsiounis expressed his praise towards his side’s resilience in playing through their narrow defeat to Melbourne Victory despite illness affecting over half the squad. The side turns its attention to Perth Glory on Sunday off the back of today’s announcement of Wednesday’s clash being postponed.
Tsiounis on this morning’s postponement announcement of Wednesday’s fixture…
“It’s been a challenging week with illness breaking out through the squad. We’ve very grateful for the League allowing the game to be rescheduled and obviously not playing and putting our players at risk with their health. It just gives an opportunity for everyone to get well and hopefully be available for our next game.”
Tsiounis on the extent of illness affecting the squad…
“It’s quite significant. We had a significant Influenza A outbreak with half the squad being unavailable because of it. It has taken its toll pretty quickly and we obviously had to adjust for the Melbourne Victory game. But as we went, more of the girls started testing positive.
“We have a squad of 25 players and we only have 11 players out here training today. So, as I mentioned it was a significant impact on the squad and we’re thankful for the League being able to reschedule. I think it’s common sense in the end.”
Tsiounis on how illness affected the squad leading up to our Melbourne Victory defeat…
“It started just before we were about to leave. Matilda [McNamara] felt sick the night before we travelled. We checked in with her the morning of to see how she was but she was no good to travel. As we were leaving, a few of the other girl started to feel sick; Emily Condon, Erin Healy, and it kind of spread from there.
“We managed to push through and credit to the girls for being a bit uncomfortable and playing through. Playing through illness and Influenza is pretty significant.
“There were some positives in the game against Melbourne Victory that we can take out of it, but it [the postponement] gives the girls time to recover and bounce back in preparation for our next game.”
Tsiounis on Erin Healy’s performance against Melbourne Victory…
“She’s an amazing athlete and mentally she’s strong too. The plan was not for her to play the full game but we didn’t have many options because the girls on the bench weren’t feeling much better. We were kind of stuck in terms of the changes that we could have made during the game. So, that is why I’m super proud of the girls for what they managed to do and how they conduct themselves.
“The first 60 minutes up until we conceded I thought we were in the game and created some problems for Victory.”
Tsiounis on the vibe amongst the group despite recent challenges…
“There’s always positives to take out of situations. The group is super connected, really positive, and on board. There’s no surprise in terms of the resilience that they showed last weekend. We always look for the positives and highlight them and continue to build upon that.
“As I have always said, we’re very strong in our processes and we want to continue to work on that and look to improve on what we’re doing. We make little tweaks as we go but we don’t want to shift too far away from that and then not be able to measure what we’re doing well and what we’re not doing well.”
Tsiounis on the side’s preparations ahead of Perth away this Sunday…
“I think for the next couple of days it’s going to be day-by-day and we’ll see how the girls pull up and then adjust things as we go. The squad is very thin at the moment but hopefully in the next few days we’ll have a few more girls returning to fitness.”
