By ADEM SARICAOGLU
NEW Green Gully assistant coach Aaron Symons has revealed the Cavaliers will not “park the bus” against Richmond this Wednesday evening.
Their round eight Victorian Premier League clash was abandoned after 71 minutes late last month after heavy rain rendered the Kevin Bartlett Reserve pitch unplayable.
With the Cavaliers up 2-1 in the crucial battle for desperately needed points, the referee blew time just one minute before it would have qualified as an officially completed match.
Under Football Federation Victoria rules, 80 per cent of the 90 minutes must have been played for a result to stand, meaning the Cavaliers were within a minute of scoring a much-needed win.
Instead, however, they must now front up again this Wednesday evening to resume the match and must field the same 11 players that were on the pitch at the time.
It will resume with 19 minutes (plus injury time) to play with Green Gully still holding its three substitutions up its sleeve.
Richmond has already used its three subs and will kick off the restart with a goal kick.
Despite only needing to hold onto their one-goal buffer, Symons told Star the Cavaliers wouldn’t be changing up too much of their normal game plan and were expecting an intense 20 minutes of football.
“We’ll still need to keep a possession game, because this team is actually better than results suggest and they can play with the ball,” Symons said.“There’s still enough time to do damage so we just have to be very smart, very disciplined tactically and still maintain a possession game.
“But I don’t think we need to park the bus – just play our normal way.”
Symons, who assists playing coach Jeffrey Fleming from the sidelines, expressed the club’s disappointment at needing to finish off a match that should have been settled with an extra minute’s play three weeks earlier.
“The boys are disappointed that they have to continue the game,” he said.“As coaching staff we now have to prepare the team very well because Richmond has a better squad than what their results suggest.
“And to come back for a 19-minute game is, from a coaching perspective, going to be a very big challenge for us, too.”
The restart has also forced Green Gully to alter its training schedule, with key league and cup fixtures also on the horizon.
“We’re treating it like almost a very heavy training session for 20 minutes, and that’s in terms of which players will be available,” Symons said.
“So the 20-minute game we look at as, for those who are playing, as their training session. For those that aren’t, we’re going to make them run at Richmond afterwards.”
Meanwhile, the Cavaliers were able to relieve some the pressure on Saturday with an important 2-1 win away to Southern Stars.
