Inglewood United’s current position in the bottom half of the National Premier Leagues ladder is by no means an indicter of the talent which lies within asserts midfielder David Perich. It’s been a tough month for the club with just two points gained from four outings and a tumble down the standings to ninth place. “That is poor given the players we have in the team,” was Perich’s honest assessment of Inglewood’s predicament. “Even though we’ve not got the results we wanted, the squad remains really positive and there’s lots of energy at training. But we’re going to have to do extremely well to finish where we think we should be on the ladder.”

Wind the clock back just one month and Inglewood was sitting only two points outside the top four. Today, the clubs hopes of playing finals football are looking slender and Perich has a fair idea why that might be. “At our best, we are a better team than Bayswater City, Balcatta and Sorrento. But on the day those teams took their chances and we didn’t,” he said. “I feel an unstable starting eleven has been a big factor in our winless run. When we were on-form we had a pretty stable team out on the park. The past month we’ve had people injured and on holiday which impacts on that match day cohesion.”

Perich, one of Inglewood’s most experienced, put his hand up to shoulder some of the burden. “I have had a standard season, some good performances and some shockers. The past month has been unexplainably average,” said Perich, who found the change of role against Bayswater to his liking. “Right back is bloody easy! I’d been pretty bad in the middle the past few weeks, so it was a nice change. You get a lot of time on the ball, you know where the pressure is going to come from, and nobody thinks you are going to attack so you can drift into the play.”

Now in his fourth year with the club, Perich says there are some exciting days ahead for Inglewood. “There has been a lot of positive change this year,” he explained. “The new committee have been putting a bunch of things in place to set the club up for the years to come. There’s now a greater alignment between the juniors and seniors, they’re integrating the club into the community and putting many things in place to support the players. The squad is definitely the most harmonious team I’ve been part of at Inglewood. When things are going badly, everyone pulls together to try and change things.”

Inglewood’s next assignment is on home soil to an Armadale side which has not won since mid-March. “They’ve got a very young, enthusiastic squad and have a reputation for being a physical team who make you work hard to get a win,” commented Perich, who missed the early season 6-1 victory at Armadale which heralded the start of an eight-game unbeaten league run for Inglewood. “We had just come off a very similar month, losing the opening four games of the season, and it was against Armadale that we kick-started our season. We are holding on by the threads to the season, so let’s hope for a repeat.”