Shea Connors was celebrating before the ball had even hit the back of the net, wheeling away as she scored what would prove the winning goal in the 69th minute of Sydney’s 1-0 triumph over Melbourne City in Saturday evening’s A-League Women grand final.
Connors had been on the park for all of 120 seconds to that point, brought on to replace Princess Ibini. Now she was being mobbed by teammates converging from the pitch and the bench, having put her side on the way to a historic fifth title.
Goals win games, but in this case it feels more accurate to attach that honour to the pass that secured the winning strike. Collecting the ball as her side looked to break, Indiana dos Santos carried over the halfway line before dropping the ball into an area where only Connors could reach it.
It sat up perfectly for her to shoot the first time. It was the type of ball attackers go to bed dreaming about, with Melbourne defender Taylor Otto able do little more than join the 7671 supporters in attendance in watching Connors deposit the ball beyond a charging Melissa Barbieri and into the back of the net.
Half an hour later, after ten tortuous minutes of added time, it was official. The Harboursiders stood alone. Alone not just as the champions of the A-League Women for the 2023-24 campaign but in the annals of the game’s history.
“When we got ahead one-nil I knew we weren’t losing,” said Sydney boss Ante Juric. “It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t how I wanted it to perfectly pan out, because we weren’t at our best. But in terms of heart we were through the roof.”
As long as football has been played in this country – in the A-League Women or its predecessor Women’s National Soccer League – no side had ever won five titles until Saturday evening. No side, in fact, had won more than three, apart from City and Sydney. But Sydney now has five. They have back-to-back titles, after playing their seventh-straight decider, in their 16th straight finals campaign.
City undoubtedly will have left AAMI Park feeling that they created enough and did enough to merit winning the game themselves. They finished with 14 shots to six, ten of which came in Jada Whyman’s penalty area. But the foibles that have threatened to derail this City side throughout the season, all of the ball but nothing to show for it, reared their heads again at the worst possible time.
True to his pre-game word, City boss Dario Vidošić sent his side out looking to win their their way. As they had done all season, City would seek to dominate possession and refuse to settle for half-chances. They would prevent their opponents from finding any semblance of rhythm or momentum with this weight of territory and possession – after all, you can’t score if you don’t have the ball.
But while City would have their moments, and duly ended the game with 71% of possession, it felt like Sydney had come to AAMI Park knowing this was exactly what awaited them. City had come to win their way but Sydney had come to beat City, with plans in place to do just that.
When City did get the ball into the final third, they all too often found themselves bogged down on the edge of the penalty area, knocking the ball around looking for the perfect pass or look on goal that a scrambling, physical, dogged defence refused to provide.
Connors’ goal injected a new sense of urgency into their game, with Shay Holman miraculously deflecting a Letecia McKenna effort away and Rhiana Policina putting a hot shot over in the exchanges that followed, but there was to be no miraculous comeback.
It didn’t result in a grand final that will go down as being particularly momentous for the on-field action – Juric called it “ugly” post-game – but Sydney came to Melbourne knowing what they needed to do. And while not everything worked, enough – especially defensively – did. In the end, they only needed one chance. And Connors was able to convert.
“For 99 minutes we were perfect,” said Vidošić. “And then for that one second, we gave the ball away. A little bit sloppy, got caught, a little miscommunication at the back and [Connors] was able to put a chance away.”
