Wellington Phoenix head coach Mark Rudan hailed the crowd at Eden Park as his side drew against current Hyundai A-League champions, Melbourne Victory.
Roy Krishna opened the scoring in front of the 20,000 + crowd before Keisuke Honda leveled for the visitors.
Despite several late chances for both sides, the game ended with teams sharing the spoils.
On Record-Breaking Crowd…
“I want to start by saying, and I said it over there as well, a record-breaking crowd. It’d be remiss of me not to mention that and thank you to all the Auckland faithful that came out. Thank you for everybody else that you know either flew, came by boat, walked, drove to Eden Park because it was superb. I think they should be given a lot of credit for coming out and supporting this Football Club and the players out there tonight. I think it’s always important that we we mention that, probably the most important thing for me because we didn’t really know what to expect but obviously the ticket sales were great but then until you see the actual number I think it’s just reward for you know all the hard work that everybody has done at this Football Club. Not just the players you know not just the coaching staff but also the people in the back office who worked extremely hard throughout the week to make sure that there was a proper event taking place. They worked overtime this week, everybody involved, so credit to them.”
On Taking A Point…
“Depends if the glass is half full or half empty. Are we happy? No. You know we we had a big change to take the two-nil lead. It was a fantastic counter attacking move and we were positioned in the right areas. We were hoping that would happen more often because you know we worked on on that as well but it wasn’t to be. They got a penalty and if you look at the stats I guess it was quite even in terms of shots and almost 40 shots there as well between the two it seems. So you know I did say to the players enjoy it, enjoy the moment and make sure we entertain. Go and put on a show out there because you don’t know when you’re going to be playing in front of 20,000 people again. Certainly disappointment. I was disappointed not so much with the result as much as we weren’t at our levels. That’s what was disappointing, certain individuals you know probably weren’t there tonight for whatever reason you know. I need to find that out. We were nowhere near our best, I’d say we were about 70 percent so that was quite disappointing.”
Watch the full press conference here.
