With the premiers plate in hand and their injury woes eased, Melbourne City will turn their focus towards charging into finals.
Rado Vidosic's City claimed top spot with two games to spare and take on crosstown rivals Western United at AAMI Park on Saturday night.
Vidosic, who previously claimed an A-League Women premiership-championship double at City in 2019-20, admitted securing silverware less than four months after taking over from Patrick Kisnorbo had been validating.
"The emotions have been amazing. To be honoured to coach this group of players that have been so successful, you're kind of thinking that it may probably go south when you first come," Vidosic said.
"But we managed to get some good results. We managed to get some good wins. We managed to increase the points difference on our opponents since I took over.
"We changed a lot of things that we were working on. We changed the way that we were training. There were positives from my point of view, a lot of positives accumulating day by day.
"And to win the premiership at the end of it, it just showed me that the old geezer has got something left in him and can probably help these young players.
"I was very pleased with that and I'm very excited now for the next six or seven weeks that lay ahead of us."
Reigning champions United are three points outside the top six, making Saturday a must-win game for their finals hopes.
"I'm looking forward to it because this is how the finals will be," Vidosic said.
"We know that we're going to play our first game (of finals) away from home. Whoever we play away will throw everything at us, will try to press us, will be very aggressive, will defend in numbers, will play counter-attacking football.
"I am looking forward to this game to see how we can contain them, how we can manage the game and how we can overcome that situation."
Mathew Leckie and Richard van der Venne will return from hamstring and calf injuries respectively.
"They provided so much attacking power for us. We missed them, we missed their creativity. We missed Richard's constant forward runs. We missed Leckie's calmness on the ball," Vidosic said.
"One thing that maybe helped us with them being away was (Jordan) Bos, he had to step up and he did that. He contributed on that left-hand side really well for us in the last few weeks.
"He's going to be licking his lips to see those two coming back and playing on his side; re-start that evolution on that left-hand side for us."
