Tara Murray
Yarraville Glory is starting to tick the boxes as it aims to be among the contenders in the FV state league 1 north-west competition.
The Glory has been competitive in all its matches so far and sit fifth on the table after seven rounds.
Coach Paul Agathouli said he was happy with how things were starting to progress. On Friday night, the Glory beat Whittlesea United, 2-0.
“We’re doing well in the season,” he said. “We want to be pushing for promotion.
“The two games we did lose, we were leading quite comfortably, but we didn’t get the result we were looking for.
“The last two weeks have been a draw and we had a good win on the weekend. We’ve had two clean sheets back-to-back.”
Agathouli said one thing they had worked on this season was making sure that they weren’t easy to score against.
He said they were starting to see that within games.
“If we don’t concede goals, we win games,” he said. “We have got in a French player, Aziz Gueye, and he has had a huge impact in defence.”
Agathouli said they had brought in seven players this season to freshen up the squad. He said they wanted to ensure they had a good group to build with.
“We’ve got three internationals, two from Japan as well,” he said.
“We identified the areas that we needed players. We brought in seven new players to freshen it up.
“We handpicked who we wanted to bring in. We wanted good people and good characters and the team is close on and off the park.”
Agathouli said they had started to tick a lot of boxes they had hoped to achieve this season.
The Glory has been busy in recent weeks, with the side still alive in the knockout Australia Cup competition.
The side are set to face Skye United on Tuesday night in the fifth round.
Agathouli said a win would mean it’s the furthest they’ve been in the competition.
“For a community club out west to go through to the next round is massive for the club,” he said.
“It’s a good experience, obviously some good exposure for the club.”
Things are also going well for the junior side of the club, with Agathouli saying numbers were nearly back to where they were pre-COVID.
In other state league 1 north-west matches, Altona City beat Keilor Park, 1-0 on Saturday.
Tara Murray
