Adelaide United Head Coach, Carl Veart, gave his thoughts to media at Coopers Stadium ahead of his side’s trip to Brisbane to face the Roar on Friday evening.
With the Isuzu UTE A-League season put on hold for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™, the Reds’ last match was its comprehensive win over Melbourne Victory close to a month ago.
Time between games:
“It’s always difficult when you’ve got such a long time between games, but we went and had a friendly game last week in Melbourne with Western United which refocused the players for this week.
“It sort of got them back into their routine of playing a game and recovering and then training and preparing for the next game.
“So we’re very happy with how the break went and we just want to get back to playing again tomorrow night.”
Getting back into the swing of things:
“It is another sort of restart.
“We started slowly at the beginning of those first six games, but then started to hit our straps just as the break came.
“It’s important that we pick up from where we left off and we’ve had a real focus on that at trainings, especially the last week.
“We’ve looked at a lot of video from what we did well before the break and that’s the standard that the players set for themselves and that’s what we want to get straight back to.”
Injury update:
“Bernardo and Zach (Clough) had the long term injuries before the break, so they’ve been able to get a little bit more work in.
“Harry (Van der Saag) had surgery yesterday and it went quite well.
“He’s a young player that we had to make sure that we looked after his long term future, so it was beneficial for him to get the surgery done now and not let it get any worse than what it was.
“It just now means he’s got at least 12 week recovery before he can start training again.
“So if things go well with his recovery, hopefully who have him back for the back end of the season.”
Goodwin’s matchday inclusion:
“He’s had quite a few big highs over the last couple of weeks and with the travel and the heat of playing in Qatar, as well.
“He is a true professional and you saw how well he went over (in Qatar) and it’s just a matter of him recovering as much as he can from the flight and getting used to being back home.
“There’s one thing (Craig) doesn’t lack and that’s confidence.
“We know that whenever he performs for us, he normally performs at his best and that’s what we want from our leader.”
