Sydney skipper Steve Corica believes his team's discipline has been behind the Sky Blues' best-ever start to a season, as they put Melbourne to the sword 3-0 to establish a gap on top of the A-League table.
The contrast in Sydney's style from last season and this could not be more stark, with Vitezslav Lavicka instilling a defensive toughness that has made it one of the hardest side's to score against in the competition. But it was up the other end where Sydney impressed against Melbourne in front of the biggest A-League crowd of the season, scoring all three goals in a four-minute burst.
Corica said whether it's banging them in at one end, or stopping them at the other, the source is the same, the discipline of the players.
"I think you can see the way we are playing, we are well-organised. We working hard for each other, there's a good team spirit and things are going nicely at the moment," Corica, who has been at the club since its inception, said.
"I think the attacking side was good today, but defensively we were very solid, kept a good shape as well. We broke very quickly. The two boys up front, Brosquey and Bridgey, they were fantastic, they worked very hard. Same as the rest of the team, everyone worked hard. We did a very good job."
The ease of Sydney's success over Melbourne, just its third in 13 matches against the dual championship winning club, could be viewed as a statement to the rest of the competition that Sydney is the team to knock over for the title. But Corica is not buying into the hype so early in the season, and said it's important to keep the goals short-term at this stage.
"It was a very good win for us, we scored three goals, but we don’t want to get too carried away because it's only another game. We've broken away from Melbourne now a little bit, but there's still a lot of teams trying to catch us. We didn’t want to get too carried away, it was a good performance, and there's still many games to go."
Lavicka has made a reputation for being a man of few words and while he was delighted to have knocked off the defending champion in front of a crowd of 30.688, which he described as magnificent, he preferred to let his players' deeds speak for themselves.
"Yes we are happy of course. The players have shown through an excellent performance. We started very well in the game, hit three goals in a few minutes, after that, we controlled the game. In the second half, we were compact in defence. Very happy," he said.
However, the Sydney coach did take the time to single out Simon Colosimo's performance in the centre of defence, saying he is one of the team's most influential players.
"His role is very important for the team's success. Last season I know he had a lot of injury problems, he's fit ready to play a very important part of our team. He's played consistently, the whole season, with Seb Ryall or with Stephan Kellar as well."