Sydney FC star Brett Emerton is confident Saturday's crucial 2-1 win over the red-hot Perth Glory will be the catalyst for a late-season surge towards the A-League finals series.
The stand-in skipper played a starring role in Saturday's victory, scoring the opening goal in the 54th minute and setting up Bruno Cazarine's 72nd-minute effort to secure a vital three points.
A delighted Emerton, who wore the captain's armband in the absence of suspended skipper Terry McFlynn, praised his team-mates' character after they reversed Sunday's disastrous 5-2 loss to Newcastle Jets.
"It's a fantastic win for us, the most important one of the season and in difficult times it was great to see that every player went out there tonight, no one went hiding, everybody showed and wanted the ball," a delighted Emerton said.
"I think apart from the win that was the most important thing, the players showed character and that's going to take us a long way hopefully for the rest of the season and hopefully into the finals."
Asked if the victory can act as a springboard for the seventh-placed Sky Blues in the final six games of the regular season, the former Blackburn stalwart replied: "Of course, I think if you look at Perth for example, last time we played them only four or five weeks ago we were sitting in a similar spot on the table and since then they've used that as a springboard to go on and string some wins together."
"Hopefully we can take a look at them and see what they've done and do a similar thing."
He added of his own performance in his return match from a hamstring injury: "I was happy and just happy to be back playing. I hated watching last week but I enjoyed the game out there tonight and hopefully the fans enjoyed it as well."
Coach Vitezslav Lavicka heaped praise on his marquee man but was equally delighted with the efforts of his entire squad.
"Look at the stats, he scored one and he set up the second one, he did a good performance but I have to say that all players on the park worked very hard tonight to get the result on the park and show our fans a good quality performance," the coach said.
"We kept the passion and played much better in defence as a team and of course we finally took our chances."
"Every win is important but you know how we lost the game last time against the Jets so it wasn't easy to pick up the players again."
"But we made some changes in the starting line-up and all players in the squad worked very hard before the game in training, so I'm happy because it was a great response from them."
"We knew that the last game when we played at home here against the Jets it wasn't good so this result, this performance was like a present for Sydney FC members and fans."