In early April, when Melbourne City and Canberra United played out the final game of the 2022/23 A-League Women season to determine the top four, Melbourne Victory's players gathered at each other's houses to watch their own fate unfold on live television.
Sitting just one point ahead of fifth-placed Canberra, teetering on the edge of elimination, the team had done as much as they could in their rollercoaster campaign to keep their finals hopes alive: a 2-2 draw against Wellington in the final round was enough to cling to fourth spot, but other results needed to swing in their favour.
All they could do now was wait, peering at the screen through their fingers on Sunday afternoon as City and Canberra decided their future.
Kayla Morrison wasn't there, though. The Victory captain was so anxious that, instead of joining her team-mates in her own house to watch the game, she turned off her phone and walked nervous laps around her neighbourhood for the entire 90 minutes.
The only way she knew the final result — a 3-3 draw, which meant Victory kept their fourth spot on goal difference alone — was when she heard her friends screaming from somewhere over the rooftops before they ran outside to find her.
"I probably slept the best I've slept in a week," Morrison told ABC Sport at the launch of the A-League Women finals series in Sydney.
"The past two nights before that were so horrible, just waiting to know what was going to happen.
"I value my life, and if I was to watch the game, I would have stroked out.
"I went and got a pizza during the first half, so I didn't have to watch one minute. I delivered the pizza, I watched five minutes, and I was sweating through my shirt. Huge sweat patches. I was getting hives, I was so anxious.
"So then I went for a six-kilometre walk. I could hear the girls yelling, but I couldn't really decipher happy yells and angry yells. So I was more confused than ever until they ran downstairs and said, 'we're going through!'
"It's been lucky for us to come in fourth, so we didn't want to change that storyline and go in third. We were really trying to get in that fourth place and re-live that story."
It's a story worth repeating; the kind of fairytale that becomes a blockbuster movie.
In the 2020/21 season, Victory scraped into third spot thanks to a fortuitous series of results in the final round. Coming into their final game in fifth, just one point behind Adelaide and two behind Canberra, the Melbourne team needed a win over Perth Glory — as well as for Canberra to either lose or draw against Sydney — in order to jump into third.
Canberra, fortuitously, drew 0-0 with the Sky Blues, while Victory thumped Perth 6-0, sending them into the semi-finals at the last possible moment: the football version of Indiana Jones snatching his hat from beneath a rapidly-descending door.
After defeating Brisbane Roar 6-2 in the semi-finals, Victory then played out one of the most memorable grand finals in ALW history: a 1-0 defeat of Premiers Sydney FC thanks to an Olimpico in the final minute of extra-time by then-rising star, Kyra Cooney-Cross.
Last year was even more dramatic. The final round began with Victory in fourth, buffered by a two-point gap to Perth in fifth. However, after drawing with Canberra 0-0, there was every chance that the Glory would demolish last-placed Wellington to leap-frog them on goal difference.
Perth won 3-1, which ultimately wasn't enough. Victory made it through to finals, but again: only just.
And yet, according to Morrison, that's exactly how they like to do it.
In fact, despite these last-gasp stumbles over the finish line, Victory have won the ALW Championship in both of their past two seasons: coming from behind the pack of favourites to cause the kind of upsets that become part of football folklore.
Last season's finals run was one of the most memorable, starting from fourth spot to see off a vibrant Adelaide United in the first semi-final before defeating cross-town rivals and runners-up Melbourne City in the preliminary.
They reached the grand final against Premiers Sydney FC for the second time in a row, diving into the depths of resilience they'd developed over the course of their COVID and injury-ravaged season to somehow, once again, win the whole damn thing.
"Everyone has said, 'this is our path,'" Morrison grins.
"We've done this for the past two years: we get fourth or third place, and we start to find our stride. It's no time to freak out; it's no time for any of it. Let's just stay calm and do what we know how to do, which is play finals football.
"We're going into this series again, for the third time, as underdogs. But it's not a bad place to be in. We've been here before, we know it now. We know what it takes."
This season has been no different.
In one of the most tightly-contested ALW campaigns in years, with just 12 points separating first from sixth, a single dropped game here or there could have been disastrous.
For Victory, they walked a particularly tight rope, tallying the highest number of draws of any other team in the league (eight), while also scoring the fewest goals of any team inside the top six (29). It feels like there is something in the universe willing them forward.
"With all those ties, sometimes they feel like wins and sometimes they feel like losses," Morrison said.
"With such a tying season, you're not really moving around the ladder that much: you're just watching everyone else move around you. So that was definitely hard. And then obviously with injuries and people leaving to join their other teams, that's been tough, too.
"Losing [Alex Chidiac] was really difficult for us ... and then obviously losing [Elise Kellond-Knight] to injury as well. That was emotionally very hard on everyone, because we'd watched her throughout the year battle through her rehab, and she was saying she felt the best she ever had.
"But in saying all of that, when one door closes, another one opens for somebody else. So we've had Alanna Murphy step into the hole, and then she scores a banger in our last game. So it's been really hard, but we've found solutions."
Given what Morrison herself has been through, there is perhaps no better person to be leading Victory into the 2022/23 finals series after the challenges they've faced this season.
Last year, the American-born defender had to watch from the sidelines after tearing her ACL in the first game. And while she was still involved behind the scenes in the team's run to the Championship (her jersey accompanied Victory everywhere they went), she still felt like something special was happening without her.
"When you're on the sidelines, it's harder to tell somebody what they're doing wrong or to give them feedback because they can just say, 'well, you're not doing anything,' which is a valid point as well," she said.
"So it was good for me to see it from that angle, because the girls then saw how much I was grinding through rehab, doing the worst workouts and hardest things I've ever done, so they could see that I was leading by example.
"I had a harder time leading verbally last year because I couldn't back it up physically: I wasn't out there on the field showing them. But this year, I feel like I've got to add a second tier to that because now they've seen what I can do.
"My best way of captaining is to be friends with everyone. We're more of a democracy. On the field, we're co-workers; we're getting the job done. But if something's happening off the field, I can talk to them about it as a friend.
"It's hard to hear things from your friends sometimes, but you take it the best. Like, if your friend is telling you something, they must mean it because they care about you. So I've really felt like it's been the perfect year to step into that role."
But before she can think about a remarkable Championship three-peat — the first time ever for the club, and just the second time in the history of the league — they first have a tricky Melbourne City side to overcome in this Saturday's semi-final.
This time, Kayla Morrison will be there, front-and-centre, dictating her own destiny.
"It would be the end of the most amazing story ever," Morrison said.
"It was so hard to watch the girls win without you, so it would be nice to have them win with you as their captain.
"We love talking about broken hearts at Victory. That is what drives us. Hopefully we can go back to Sydney, but right now, we've got to worry about breaking hearts with City. One step at a time for us."
