James Troisi knows all about Melbourne Victory’s rivalry with Adelaide United, and he’s prepared for another battle on Good Friday.
Victory is pushing to finish in second in the Hyundai A-League and heads to Coopers Stadium on the back of a 2-1 win over the Central Coast Mariners.
With two games remaining in the regular season, it is two points behind Sydney FC and nine ahead of the Reds, who are fighting for a home final.
Troisi believes the experience of winning the Championship last season will hold Victory in good stead ahead of another big finish to the campaign.
“Obviously (we have) experience and the good thing is we’ve got quite a few players now in this team, in this group, that have experienced that,” he said on Tuesday.
“Definitely try and help the younger players or the ones that might not know what it feels like or what it means, but we want to be playing good football which obviously helps in the outcome of the game.
“We’ve got to continue that and it’s going to be a big fight on Friday night so we have to be prepared for that.”
Georg Niedermeier’s first Victory goal helped it past the Mariners after Ola Toivonen’s opener was cancelled out by a Matt Simon penalty.
Troisi, who has provided an equal Hyundai A-League high eight assists this season, said there were plenty of positives to take from Victory’s performance.
“It’s that old one that you’re expected to win and when you win it’s not a big deal, but for us it is very important and for Central Coast it was kind of a nothing-to-lose game so those games are always a little bit difficult,” he said.
“We played some very good football, we did a review this morning, we had a lot of opportunities but in the end I think we felt quite comfortable that sooner or later we were going to get the second goal and it could’ve been a lot more.
“Obviously the three points but the football that we played as well which was very pleasing.”
