Experience to steel Victory as destiny awaits their and Sydney’s ALW seasons.
It all comes down to this. Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC on the final day of the season. A Big Blue to decide the premiership and final playoff entrant, and Jeff Hopkins thinks his side is ready.
It’s the type of game that makes you wonder if one of the footballing gods counts themselves as something of a scriptwriter. Bitter foes Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory clashing at Leichhardt Oval on the last day of the A-League Women season, in a contest that will define not only their individual campaigns but the league’s as a whole.
Three points. That’s what Ante Juric’s Sky Blues need to secure a historic fourth premiership, a feat of remarkable consistency and excellence from a club that has redefined what that means in Australian women’s football. Lose or draw, and they’ll open the door for Melbourne City to steal the crown away from them with a win over Perth Glory in the hours that follow.
They could have already wrapped things up midweek if not for Michelle Heyman, whose 56th-minute strike not only set a new record for most goal involvements in a single women’s season but also lifted second-bottom Canberra United to an unlikely 1-0 win in what could be the last game in the club’s history – another moment that makes one wonder if destiny is attempting to steer things for dramatic effect.
Victory meanwhile, needs a point to play finals. It doesn’t matter if it’s three or one but after Newcastle put Adelaide to the sword on Friday night, they now find themselves on the outside looking in at the top six, level on points with the fifth-placed Jets and the sixth-placed Wanderers but, despite their goal difference being clear of both, falling afoul of the league’s new wins tiebreaker – the exact opposite of the scenario that saw the pip Canberra to the final playoff place last season.
Indeed, Victory has made something of a habit of almost falling over the line and into finals football in recent years but, for the most part, they’ve been able to do so and then go on to do something positive in the finals; they beat Melbourne City in one of the most remarkable games in A-League Women’s history in last year’s Elimination Final and, in the two season’s before that, they lifted the title.
“Just a normal week for us coming to the end of the season,” coach Jeff Hopkins joked.
“It's all about putting [last week’s loss to Newcastle] out of our minds and focusing 100% on Sunday. So far this week, we've had a positive couple of days. We worked on a few scenarios. Probably the key thing for us is we know what we've got to do. Having a plan for a few different scenarios. But also keeping the players nice and calm as well.
“KK [Elise Kellond-Knight] will definitely be back [from injury]. She'll be back in the squad, which is great, to have a player of that calibre come in. That experience coming in for a game like this is really important.
“We do have a number of really good leaders in the group. They'll be really important. We've got some young, some young players in the side that will bring that enthusiasm, that intensity, and that real energy to the team but on the flip side of that the leaders coming in with being there, having experienced these things before will be really important as well.”
But Kellond-Knight is set to return for Victory, her Matildas teammate Lydia Williams is not, with the goalkeeper still recuperating from ankle surgery she underwent in February. And while Hopkins wouldn’t rule her out from a return during the playoffs should his side qualify, there are no guarantees she would assume the number one position if she did so, with the coach describing Courtney Newbon as “Playing out of her skin recently.”
Of course, Victory only finds themselves in this position of needing to take something because of a player who is no longer there. Their former talisman Melina Ayres, who departed during the last offseason, lifted her new side the Jets to a remarkable come-from-behind win last week with a brace, a feat she repeated on Friday during the Novocastrians 8-0 hammering of the Reds. Again, all these little dramatic flairs and callbacks keep coming up.
“We've really focused on ourselves this week,” said Hopkins. “Over the past few weeks, we've maybe looked at the opposition a little bit too much. If you look at us and if you look at Sydney, we play with a certain style, we don't really change too many things. We change personnel but not the way we play. So I think they understand what they'll get from us and I think we understand what we'll get from them.
“It's about going up there and being the best possible version of ourselves that we can be. Looking at the quality of what we do with the ball. Obviously, we need to play well defensively and stop the key players that they possess. But if we can be at our best, we think we can beat any team in the league.”