Melbourne Victory head coach Grant Brebner hopes the postponement of Sunday’s meeting with Brisbane Roar can be an advantage for his squad.
Victory’s clash against Brisbane, scheduled to be played at Dolphin Stadium on Sunday, was postponed after the Queensland government imposed a three-day lockdown in the Greater Brisbane area due to COVID-19.
The longer gap between games is set to give the likes of Rudy Gestede and Ryan Shotton more time to gain fitness, while Robbie Kruse (knee) closes in on a return and Marco Rojas recovers from a hamstring injury.
Brebner hopes the decision to postpone the trip to Brisbane is advantageous for Victory.
“It’s an opportunity I think where we can look at it and try and make the best of the situation,” he told a news conference on Friday.
“It’s the world we live in at the moment where things are changing every day, but from a footballing perspective we get an opportunity now to bring players a little bit closer to match fitness with that extended break and who knows it might even work in our favour.”
Brebner added: “Obviously Ryan and Rudy can get some more fitness into them, Robbie’s obviously back training and Marco has got that extra couple of days to see if he can get up.
“It’s not the end of the world that the game’s not going ahead, it’s just frustrating because we’ve prepared for it.”
Kruse, 32, is nearing a return after suffering a knee injury in July last year.
Brebner said plans were being put in place to help with Kruse’s return to competitive action.
“Robbie’s full training, but a little bit different because Robbie’s been out for a number of months. He will need games before he returns into A-League action. It’s just mapping that plan out for him,” he said.
“He would’ve been one that would benefit from these external games outside of the A-League and obviously with what’s gone on we still need to make sure we can get those.”
