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The win was Valkanis’ first as a senior coach since he replaced John Kosmina at the helm two weeks ago.
Valkanis said his players had been putting in the hard yards in training since he took over and were beginning to see results on-field.
“You have to train the way you play,” Valkanis said.
“If you train that way you’ll transfer it over to the way you play.
“Everything we worked on in training was perfect,” he said.
The 38-year-old coach said his team showed plenty of character as they maintained their focus and executed a physical game-plan to disrupt Victory’s style of play.
“I really wanted the players to show that passion, that aggression, to win a game,” Valkanis said.
“Defending is about keeping focus right to the end.
“Antony Golec put in a great tackle at the end to get us out of trouble and that’s the focus you need,” he said.
Victory coach Ange Postecoglou said his side had ‘put in a good shift’ despite being knocked around by the home team.
Postecoglou felt Victory never really got into their stride due to the high foul count in the match.
“It was physical, when it's like that it is pretty hard to get a decent flow in a game, it's pretty disruptive, stop-start all the time,” he said.
“It makes it hard to get any flow or rhythm into it which, from our perspective, is the kind of football we want to play.”
Valkanis was sent from the field by referee Jarred Gillett in the 42nd minute after which meant me never saw Jeronimo’s goal that sealed victory against the Reds’ bitter rivals.
As he walked up the tunnel Valkanis said the fans let him know what he’d just missed.
“It was fantastic to hear the Adelaide United crowd,” he said.
“I didn’t know who scored, I didn’t care but I knew we were 1-0 up and that’s what we needed”.