Rudan battling player attitudes as Phoenix coach
WELLINGTON: Mark Rudan is finding he is a counsellor as much as he is a coach, devoting much of his time at the Wellington Phoenix to improving the players’ confidence.
Rudan revealed many in his team are lacking selfbelief, and there was no better example than Saturday’s 31 loss to Adelaide, which plunged them into the competition’s bottom two.
Up 10 early against the Reds, the Phoenix conceded an equaliser via an unfortunate headed own goal from defender Tom Doyle on the stroke of halftime.
It sent confidence levels plung ing to an unwarranted degree,
Rudan said.
‘‘I’ve been working extremely hard to change the mentality around, but coming in at 11 at halftime, the boys were really down and we were lifting up their spirits.
‘‘As they go a goal down or make a mistake, they seem to go back to that default setting of putting the head down and almost feeling sorry for themselves — ‘oh, it’s happened again’.’’
Rudan said he was not surprised when Adelaide claimed the lead soon after halftime, such was the depressed state of his players.
Makeshift Adelaide striker Ken Ilso sealed the outcome with his second goal midway through the second spell.
‘‘There was nothing wrong with that first half, it was good,’’ Rudan said.
‘‘You can talk tactics, you can talk all that sort of stuff. The biggest issue was our mental approach to the second half and that’s a work in progress.’’
The Phoenix has reached the finals once in the last six seasons and are coming off arguably its most discouraging campaign, when morale collapsed under departed coach Darije Kalezic.
Club officials had warned Rudan about the mental block, which he says may take time to fix.
‘‘Maybe it’s going to take a year, maybe it’s going to take two years.
‘‘I want fighters because the game’s not done until it’s done. Some are showing it and some aren’t really there right now.
‘‘. . . But I’m not going to walk away from it, it’s part of the job for me.’’ — AAP