An upbeat Des Buckingham was seeing the bright side of the Phoenix's playoffs predicament after the weekend win over the Brisbane Roar as well as having a full squad to select from.
Roly Bonevacia, Tom Doyle and Ryan Lowry all missed the trip to Brisbane after being stood down last week by the Phoenix management team. But after a positive week, the trio are back in contention for the match against Perth on Saturday in Auckland.
"They’ve apologised to the playing group so they're back in for selection same as everybody else, full selection this weekend," Buckingham told journalists.
When asked how it was received by the team, Buckingham was frank.
"I think as welcome as you want to be, they're out training, they trained all last week, they’ve trained this week. All 3 of them have applied themselves and got back to the professional standards, got on with the job they should be doing."
Buckingham cited a 'lack of professionalism' when standing down the trio last week.
With the team firing on all cylinders in tough conditions in Brisbane, he was cautious to say the win was a result of the disciplinary action.
"I don’t know if vindicated is the right word, it was an opportunity to refocus the playing group, something that was possibly needed, and it worked.
"Sometimes it doesn't work - we could have gone to Brisbane and lost the game and performed poorly as a result."
Hoping to ride a wave of momentum into the Glory clash that the Phoenix must win if they're going to make a run to the playoffs, Buckingham also stopped short of any talk about the playoffs.
"If you'd asked me a couple of weeks ago, I would have told you [our hopes were] top 4 top 6, but now we really need to focus on game by game.
"We've got 6 games left, if we look too far ahead, there's a lot that can happen.
"It's in our hands."
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