WHENEVER a lowly-ranked team beats one of the top sides in the league, it is natural it gets a huge confidence boost from the win.

Normally this is a good thing, but in the case of Perth Glory I fear that last week’s victory over Sydney FC may have just filled their morale pool to an unhealthy level for a side that still sits bottom of the league.

That is, if said pool wasn’t overflowing already. I’ll explain...

It is fair to say that Glory have been abysmal so far this year, both on the field and off. Before the Sydney clash, which will be remembered by most for reasons other than the result, the WA club had won just once in seven games.

Regulation losses early in the season became thrashings in Gosford and Melbourne and at least three crisis meetings were called by members of the team, football staff and ownership.

The club has been warned the FFA is monitoring its progress with no guarantee that the club will exist, at least at A-League level, beyond next season.

Topping it off, local interest in Perth Glory is at an all-time low. Although not at a New Zealand Knights-like level just yet, home crowds are smaller than ever and most media outlets only pay serious attention when another crisis meeting comes along.

But during this time of turmoil the players’ morale has bordered on exuberant, a mood more akin to children at Christmas than that of footballers at a club which is skating on the thinnest of ice.

How or why, I don’t know. What I do know is that this isn’t the usual reaction to losing five out of seven games, throwing another away at the death and conceding 20 goals in the process.

Instead of a more intensive training regime, the traditional response to a poor run of form, Glory have found a new favourite training drill. Local scribes have dubbed it the “hokey pokey” for its resemblance to the common kindergarten dance. It doesn’t require balls, just a group of players dancing and giggling arm-in-arm in a circle.

At least the “hokey pokey” made Fox Sports News’ plays of the week, unlike most of what we’ve seen at Members Equity Stadium this season.

Now I’m not saying I want the bitching and in-fighting that often occurs at struggling clubs to become prevalent at Perth Glory - let’s leave that to the Bowyers and Dyers of the world.

But should there not have been some sort of negative feeling emanating amongst the group after they dropped so many points at the start of the new season? An inkling of remorse, rather than the façade presented by the crisis meetings and the false promise from their outcomes, would have been nice.

Instead, we have witnessed the players laughing and mucking around at training as if they were on the beach in Bali with a belly full of Bintang.

This week we have seen more of the same down at Tompkin’s Park (Glory training HQ), but at least the players have a good reason to smile after notching up a second league win.

Surprisingly it had looked as if Glory were about to have their first serious session for the season under my gaze. I have seen at least 25 sessions over the past three months and finally it looked like they had switched on!

But - it seems there’s always a ‘but’ - halfway through a drill where the lads were practising sending in crosses – an area of the game which had troubled them until the Sydney clash – as assistant coach was forced to rudely interrupt two players involved in some form of slap-each-other-on-the-head game.

Then the playing group left the track half an hour earlier than usual – I just hope the brief shower from above was purely coincidental.

The time to lift your game has passed, Perth Glory. Now it is time to catch up to the A-League pack. To prove that the Sydney game was no fluke, you will have to back it up with some more credible results before Christmas.

However, if training is anything to go by, the latest win could prove to be nothing but a flash in the purple pan.

A sports writer just past the dawn of what he hopes will be a long and successful career in journalism, Shayne Hope combines his experiences from the newsroom of the local rag and the northern terrace at Perth Oval. From Horsley to Harnwell, Despotovski to Dadi, ‘Hopey’ has seen them all. Sit back and enjoy the view from the western front...