Analysis
IT WAS a Saturday night of contrasts for the two Victorian teams, and perhaps illustrates the difference between the pair.
Melbourne Heart could not capitalise on a perfect platform - two goals inside five minutes - to see off a Newcastle Jets side that was dreadful in an opening 45 minutes but rallied to twice come from behind in the second half to snatch a 3-3 draw.
Melbourne Victory showed character, poise and quality to shrug off an early send-off and pierce one of the league's meanest defences not once but twice and earn a morale-boosting 2-0 win on the road against Western Sydney Wanderers.
Heart, with just two wins now in its first eight games, looks brittle and never quite sure that it can contain its opponents no matter how far it gets in front.
Victory looks like a team growing in self-belief and confidence, one that feels it can get a result in any circumstances.
Forget the talk of marquee players, of David Beckham, chasing corporate sponsorship and business backing. For any club the best form of marketing is winning on the pitch. It gets your name up in lights, guarantees plenty of, mainly positive, media coverage, and forges strong relationships with supporters. Human nature, alas, is fickle and, not surprisingly, people prefer to follow winning teams.
At the moment Heart is not one of them. With more than a quarter of the season gone John Aloisi's side has garnered eight points, half of which came in the first two matches of the campaign.
Yes, the red-and-whites have been hit by injury and international call-ups but, in a 10-team league such as this, with limited personnel available, all teams face injuries, call-ups and unforeseen absences of key players.
Their 4-1 thrashing of a terribly below-par Brisbane aside, and that stirring round-one triumph over Victory, things have not always gone to plan for Aloisi's men, who have rarely displayed the ruthlessness required to trouble the top teams. With the sort of start they had on Saturday night, three points instead of one should have been a formality.
The same could be said of their round-two draw against a weakened Wellington, which had lost seven first-teamers to New Zealand's World Cup qualifying campaign yet managed to scramble for a draw at AAMI Park. Those extra four points would put Heart in a much healthier position and would be a just reward for the decent soccer they have at times played this campaign under the tyro coaching team of Aloisi and Hayden Foxe, both coaching at senior level for the first time.
Aloisi afterwards belied his team's lack of concentration and inability to finish the opposition off, suggesting they may have felt things were coming too easily after being given the lead through a defensive howler after 35 seconds and an extra boost with a fifth-minute penalty.
''I've been in games where you're 2-0 up, and it's easy, then you stop doing those little things - closing down the ball, letting players past them too easy,'' Aloisi said.
''It's happened too many times this year. We just have to make sure we stay focused for 90 minutes. Even when you're two, three, four-nil up you have to do the right things and we didn't do that second half. After half-time we lost our way and we were lucky to go back up in the second half, it was our only chance.''
Ange Postecoglou is, of course, as far removed in coaching terms as it is possible to get from the Heart's inexperienced duo, and his know-how and confidence in his methods are, after a shaky first couple of games, beginning to seep through to his team.
Western Sydney has been good this season and came into this home match with tails up after winning away from home against the fancied Perth last weekend.
Yet Victory was able to shrug off the dismissal of young defender Sam Gallagher early in the game to hold out its opponent with goals in either half, the first an own goal from Michael Beauchamp, the second from evergreen frontman Archie Thompson.
The win takes Victory to third spot on the ladder and means it now has 10 points from its part four games. More important, it looks a different team to the rabble that conceded five goals to Brisbane in that round-two encounter that brought Postecoglou back for the first time to play the team he guided to two titles.
This latest success, said Postecoglou, showed his team was building the mental strength required to succeed when things are not going its way, a quality he inculcated in Brisbane, where the Roar set a league record of 36 unbeaten games under his management.
''I think we're playing some good football but, from our point of view, if we're going to be contenders we need to show a little bit more character and resilience under difficult situations,'' he said.
''Today we were tremendous in that area and if we keep showing that sort of resilience, then couple that with our football slowly getting better and we'll be a tough team to beat. We want to be that sort of team … Just because you go down to 10 men doesn't mean you should really try and settle.''
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