A heart-to-heart talk between players and coach has been the catalyst for a remarkable turnaround in form at Sydenham Park Soccer Club.
At the halfway point of the state league 1 season, the Reds were looming as one of the year’s biggest underachievers, sitting eighth on the ladder after losing three matches in a row.
That was when coach Alan Muscat sat down with his players for an “open and honest” discussion about what was going wrong.
The meeting proved just the tonic, with the Reds having won eight in a row since then, the most recent against Altona East last week.
The winning streak has led to an emphatic rise up the state league 1 ladder, the Reds jumping seven places to be in outright second, just three points behind leader Western Suburbs.
“[The meeting] was about what things needed to change and what we could work on as a group,” Muscat says.
“It was a really good discussion and some great stuff came out of it. As a group we spoke about where we wanted to be and where we were heading.
“After losing three in a row we needed to make some decisions, and they have paid off. It’s been all systems go from there.”
The Reds highlighted their dominance earlier this month with a 3-0 victory against title contender North Sunshine.
After having a competition-high 10 draws last season, Muscat said his players now had the confidence to risk losing to give themselves a shot at winning.
“We’ve tried a lot to nullify our draws,” he said.
“We wanted to have the hungriness to finish games off, while last year we were conceding goals late in games.
“We’ve lost one or two more than last year, but have turned some of those draws into wins.”
At the heart of Sydenham’s stunning run has been a watertight defence; the Reds have conceded just one goal in the past month.
Sydenham Park and Western Suburbs will meet in a season-defining clash next week.
“They’ll need to falter a couple of times for us to have any chance of catching them, but we’ll just take it week by week,” Muscat says.
“We’ll go into the break and reassess where we are at then.”
