After Melbourne Victory fought through their first game without Patrick Kisnorbo, interim coach Arthur Diles is confident the A-League Men team have the potential to kick on and make their season a winner.
Victory were blindsided by coach Kisnorbo quitting for an overseas role last Sunday, just seven games into the season, with Diles taking the reins.
In his first game at the helm, Saturday night's derby, Victory fought back from Yonatan Cohen's 17th minute goal for Melbourne City to draw 1-1 with a 65th minute Roderick Miranda equaliser - and could easily have gone on to win the game.
"When situations like this happen, you can go one of two ways," Diles said.
"It can be a complete disaster, or it can be a disciplined performance.
"The togetherness that they showed, I think they did that quite well, and they showed that as a group, they're very mature, they're very professional, and they're very together, and I'm really proud of them."
Victory sit third and will now turn their focus to a blockbuster away clash with Sydney FC on December 28.
"It's another opportunity. Every game is an opportunity for the team to grow and develop," Diles said.
"We're not anywhere near where we can be and where we will be, so we're building.
"It's still quite early on in the season, we're not even a third of the way there. It's important that we keep building our playing style, our mentality, our togetherness.
"If we keep building that and keep working hard every day, it gives us a big opportunity and big chance of being successful and that's all we can do."
Victory won't be taking any special breaks for Christmas either.
"Unfortunately, Christmas Day falls on a training day, so it's business here at the end of the day, and we've got a job to do," Diles said.
"Maybe we'll train a little bit earlier and send them to their families earlier, but we'll be training."
City, who have a concern with a suspected Achilles injury to Jimmy Jeggo, will enjoy Christmas as one of three days off, given they aren't in action again until facing Central Coast on New Year's Eve.
Aurelio Vidmar's charges have been building nicely, with just one loss in their past six games.
"That's the way it looks like it's panning out. You don't know exactly how it's going to turn out," Vidmar said.
"The teams that we've beaten have been below us, with all due respect.
"Our first test, really, was last week against Auckland, and that probably could have gone either way, and we'd done enough probably to get three points.
"And so tonight was another test for us. So it tells me we're not going away."
