Melbourne Victory skipper Leigh Broxham says his team is anything but an underdog ahead of its meeting with Brisbane Roar at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night, kicking off the most open finals series the A-League has ever seen.
A series of poor results throughout the season saw Victory slip to sixth, the last finals placing, where they would eventually finish. That standing sets up a finals opener with third-placed Roar, whom Victory held to a 0-0 draw at AAMI Park on Friday night, dashing the Queenslanders’ hopes of a third premiership and top spot in the process.
The dogged draw formed part of a trio of impressive results to round out the season, including a 2-0 win over championship hopefuls Western Sydney Wanderers and a 4-1 drubbing of Wellington Phoenix.
And it seems those performances, as well the return of skipper Carl Valeri, have given Victory a new sense of hope at the business end of the season.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Football Show, Broxham said the reigning champs cannot be regarded as underdogs.
“Finishing sixth has made things a little bit harder for us, but … we can beat anyway on the day. This weekend’s going to put that to the test,” Broxham said.
“The club’s never really taken that tag (of underdog) … it was very close, first and sixth.
“We happened to finish sixth which we weren’t happy with, you obviously want to finish further up the table.
“They (Brisbane) will know our strengths and weaknesses as well, so it will be an even game and I don’t think we will go in with an underdog tag at all.”
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Victory were thrashed 5-0 by Brisbane at Suncorp only five weeks ago, and Broxham says the “fresh” memories of that defeat will spur his team mates on.
“It (the 5-0 defeat) is still fresh.
“No one will forget that at all, we’ll go up there and memories will come back from that defeat.
“The boys will be very motivated for that to not happen again, and it’s finals football.
“Things change. The game will be very hectic, high energy, and that changes everything.
“Hopefully we can bring that to win the game. Being away from home, it’s difficult, but being a finals game it evens things out a little bit more.”
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