Weekend doubly bad for Phoenix

As weekend’s go for professional football clubs, the one just gone was about as bad they come for the Wellington Phoenix.

Two matches in the space of 19 hours with an aggregate score of 12-3.

The reserve team played a game of ‘‘anything you can do I can do better’’ with the first team, trumping the 5-1 A-League loss to Melbourne City on Saturday night from the senior team with a 7-2 humiliation at the hands of Hawke’s Bay United yesterday.

It was the nature of both losses which irked the coaches of the teams.

The senior team had chances to go 2-0 up before halftime, including a penalty miss from Kosta Barbarouses, but instead found themselves down by that scoreline going into the sheds.

They got a goal back with 20 minutes to go to make it 3-1, but gave up the ghost in the final 10 minutes to concede two more goals.

Co-coach Chris Greenacre was in a solemn mood after the game.

‘‘The penalty was a big chance for us and throughout the team heads just dropped and as soon as that happened it just started to implode around us ... just a real low point, a real low point,’’ Greenacre said.

As the reserve team players went to bed on Saturday night, they should have been thinking about how they could play well yesterday and put their case forward to replace some of the underperforming players in the first team.

Sadly, there was a discernable lack of effort from some of the key players which left their coach, Andy Hedge, fuming. ’’I’m hoping some of the older boys are a bit embarrassed by that because the attitude and application wasn’t anywhere near good enough and not what we’re expecting, certainly from the professionals.

‘‘Some of them have got to go home tonight, look at themselves in the mirror and have a think about what they want to do, because if they perform like that week-in week-out well they won’t be professional athletes for very long.’’