Hear every word from Head Coach Ufuk Talay’s press conference following the second leg 0-0 draw with the Mariners in Gosford where the match was marred with controversy.
On The 90 Minutes
Yeah, look disappointed to go out the way that we did. Obviously the first game hurt us, the score line but we’ve come here with a great mentality.
I thought we were the better team throughout the whole 90 minutes. We created some good moments, some controversial moments as you said, but very proud of the group, very proud of the boys of what they achieved this season. Something to definitely build on for next season.
But the disappointing part for me is that the game wasn’t decided by the players more so from the officials.
On the penalty decisions
Look, my opinion definitely is, I think Jordan’s one is a penalty.
I think the handball is a handball. I don’t know what the rule is with handball anymore.
I saw Daniel Arzani’s one against Wellington. It hits his knee and then it hits his chest and it hits his hand and then they give a penalty.
This one, it blatantly hits his hand or arm and it’s not given.
So I just think sometimes we just go off a whim and make a decision of how we feel at that time.
On the disallowed goal
Yeah, look, they say that he interferes and he touches Kaltak and he’s in an offside position where he’s impeding Kaltak from getting that ball off the line.
The problem is that the game is about goals and the fans want to see goals, but we tend to go back up to that person in the box and rely on that person to make a decision.
And then we look at ways of how we can actually stop the goals from happening.
That’s the disappointing part.
On Courtney-Perkins penalty shout being ruled as “Incidental Contact”
What is in incidental contact?
I don’t know what that means, mate.
He either wins the ball or he doesn’t win the ball and he pushes the player or he gets his legs tangled in the box.
I don’t know what is incidental contact.
I don’t understand that mate.
If that can be explained, that’d be great.
I don’t know, we just go off the whim and as the game goes, we try to play the game and like I said, the decisions are made where one week doesn’t match the second week.
So that’s the disappointing part.
And I don’t wanna sound like a sour puss because not once, have I ever spoke about any official.
We’ve had five players sent off in the first half this season, and haven’t spoken about anything like that. So for me, it’s just frustrating, and disappointing, to not get the outcome I think the boys deserve tonight.
On the season as a whole
Yeah, look like I said, very proud of the group of what they achieved. You know, this season has showed also the things that we require for next season.
We have players that are currently coming off contract, loan players that are going back to their clubs and gives us a good platform, a good stepping stone and we have players that are currently contracted for next season as well and give us a good platform to find the required obviously, attributes and talents that we need for us to be successful.
On Brattan playing through injury and wearing the armband
It’s not easy wearing that armband mate. You gotta carry the team.
He’s done a fantastic job for us. He’s been a great servant of the club.
He was paddling through and I had a chat with him at half time and I said, mate, you gotta continue all the way through and he definitely did that and he’s a big part of our success this season.
On Jake Girdwood-Reich not coming on
He wasn’t 100% so we tried to keep him on the bench and if we scored that goal, you know, things would have maybe changed if we got the extra time and maybe utilised him in that way but look, we didn’t wanna throw him in the deep end unless we had to.
On off contracted players
There’s a lot of stuff happening in the background. We’ve got Alex Baumjohann obviously working in the recruitment side of things.
So there’s a lot of a lot of discussions happening of what we can do and how we can do things, but obviously they gotta fit into, you know, what we wanna do first as a team and also financially as well.
On a reflection of the last six months in charge
Yeah, look like I said, proud of the group.
For me, players are the ones that do the work. They’re the ones that take the information.
We try to guide them and make them better individuals as persons and also as players and like I said, they’ve been very receptive to the information we provided.
They’ve tried out there and, and used their talents the best they can. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t but that’s the nature of the game.
But look like I said, still a lot of work to be done in the off season to put a team together that we believe can try to win a title.
