What a weekend: 23 goals scored. Four clean sheets. A first league win. The downfall of two former giants. Team and individual histories written — for right and wrong reasons.
Round 11 of the A-League Women's competition delivered all the chaos and emotion that the league is known and loved for, squeezing its biggest and most-gripping storylines into a single, three-day frenzy.
All the questions we asked at the start of the season:
- Will Sydney FC win back-to-back Premierships or will Melbourne Victory spoil the party?
- Have Melbourne City figured out their post-Matildas identity?
- Will Adelaide finally make finals?
- Will the legacy clubs continue their top four finishes?
- And who exactly is this Wellington Phoenix side?
They were stirred up and slathered across the past weekend in what turned out to be one of the most exciting and unforgettable rounds of the league in recent history.
It began on Friday when the league's bottom two teams, Canberra United and newcomers Wellington, faced off at Viking Park.
Just three points separated the two sides coming into the match: Wellington at the foot of the table with one point while Canberra were just above them with four.
Both teams were winless, both had conceded the most goals in the league so far, and both had targeted this particular game to try to turn their fortunes around.
Friday night was a collision of these two trajectories: a legacy club sliding into mediocrity versus an expansion club growing into themselves.
And while Canberra showed glimpses of their past — a couple of sparkling moments from reigning Julie Dolan medallist Michelle Heyman, the flair of a Grace Maher, the energy and wisdom of an Ash Sykes — they were, as they had been all season, merely glimpses.
Instead, it was Wellington whose dedication to their own principles and style of play finally came together and resulted in their first-ever league win.
The reaction from the players and staff after full-time was a mix of joy and relief: knowing that what they had been building — and that the belief they'd shown in the foundations they had laid — can lead to success.
For Canberra, it was a game that epitomised the issues that have affected their season: an over-reliance on senior players, defensive frailties, a wobbly midfield, and an overall lack of chemistry.
Concerns are growing around how the club that once stood as a leader in Australian women's football — a club lauded for its investment in, and focus on, the women's game exclusively, as the only club without a men's team — is now being left behind.
That's a question being aimed at the Brisbane Roar, too, following their calamitous 8-2 loss to Adelaide United on Sunday.
The Roar finished runners-up to Sydney FC last season, with 25 points and a single loss, but with four games left this year, they currently sit in seventh spot on seven points after seven losses, including four of the last five games.
This past weekend's performance against Adelaide was their worst of the bunch, a capitulation of the kind memorialised in league record Wikipedia pages. Adelaide were up 4-0 before half-time and would ultimately score four more to record their biggest-ever win in history.
Reds striker Fiona Worts made her own history, too, equalling the league's record for most goals scored by a single player in a match (5, a record that was held by former Matilda Kate Gill and equalled earlier this season by Melbourne City's Hannah Wilkinson).
The two goals to Brisbane's Shea Connors were little consolation for their worst-ever result in the league — of which, like Canberra, they are a founding member — and traditional pipeline for national team players and coaches.
How the mighty have fallen.
The Reds, meanwhile, have jumped into third and are looking likelier than ever to make finals for the first time.
Their strategy of developing local South Australian players over several seasons, complemented by a sprinkle of quality internationals, is finally paying off.
Like Wellington, Adelaide have approached this season with a deeper certainty about who they are and a belief in what they are capable of: two intangible things that have nonetheless spilled over into everything tangible they do from squad recruitment to playing style.
Finally, while the league's other top three teams — Sydney FC, Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory — all recorded expected wins, the nature of them showed that the gulf between the "haves" and the "have-nots" continues to grow.
Victory dismantled Western Sydney 5-0 on Saturday, putting on a counter-attacking clinic that exploited the inherent weaknesses in the Wanderers' defensive line and disorganised attacking system.
It was the biggest loss for Western Sydney so far this season and further highlighted their lack of firepower, having scored just three goals in 10 games.
Melbourne City, meanwhile, welcomed the return of recently-capped Matilda Holly McNamara, who scored twice in their 4-0 win over a frustrated and exhausted Perth Glory.
Striker Hannah Wilkinson extended her Golden Boot race lead, while new recruit Rhianna Pollicina continued to show that she's one of the more-exciting attacking midfielders in the country.
The most dramatic game, though, was saved for Sunday night as Sydney played Newcastle.
Since their first meeting in round one, the Sky Blues have broken a number of league records: The most minutes without conceding a goal, the highest number of consecutive clean sheets by a goalkeeper (Jada Mathyssen-Whyman), and they are on track to finish with the most points ever in the competition.
But all that almost came crashing down against the Jets, who were the only side to have found the back of Sydney's net so far this season (a 3-1 loss in December).
After Princess Ibini-Isei put Sydney ahead in the 22nd minute, Newcastle piled on the pressure and created a handful of major chances.
It all came to a head in the game's final minute.
The Jets thought they had equalised after a chaotic corner was bundled across Sydney's line, sending players, fans and commentators into raptures, but the goal was eventually disallowed due to a foul on Mathyssen-Whyman in the build-up.
With the Sky Blues escaping with a 1-0 win, their various records in-tact, they are one step closer to retaining the Premiership.
It was a fittingly chaotic end to one of the most chaotic rounds in recent memory.
What a shame, then, that all of this energy — all of these messy, unfurling narratives, all of these moments of individual brilliance and collective despair — are about to come screeching to a halt.
Catch-up games aside, the ALW has just three more rounds to go until finals before beginning one of the longest off-seasons in world football.
These players we've just started to get to know — these record-breakers, these hidden gems, these bundles of potential — will drift off into other leagues of various exposure, support and visibility, disappearing until the next season begins at the end of 2022 and they have to remind us of what they're capable of all over again.
What a shame for teams like Wellington and Adelaide, who have taken their time to warm into their respective seasons, reaching a point where they can begin to strive for more, only to have their growth arbitrarily capped by the short season length.
What a shame for legacy clubs like Canberra and Brisbane, whose identity crises will have to be dealt with during the long darkness of the off-season, with players who are scattered across the country and may never actually return.
And what a shame for fans who now must turn their attention elsewhere for the next eight months, investing their time and clicks and dollars into whatever else they can find.
As a recent FIFPro study found, the ALW's 14 regular-season rounds constitute the shortest season length of any comparable women's competition in the world.
The lack of available match minutes for players in Australia's primary development pipeline is starting to rear its head at national team level, where the majority of senior Matildas have been forced to move overseas to find full-time football, while those emerging through the ALW are woefully under-prepared.
All of these issues coalesce into the one golden question Australian football has struggled to answer for several years: How do we translate football's huge participation base into dedicated fans of its top-flight leagues?
The current structure of the ALW is anti-thetical to this aim:
- How can new fans be expected to form these deeper, emotional roots when the league is a four-month flash in the pan?
- How can even the most-dedicated fans maintain ongoing interest in the competition when it goes into stasis for eight months?
- How can clubs attract major sponsors when their brands will be visible only for one-third of a year?
- How can teams be expected to play a type of football that attracts fans when it takes them half a season to discover it for themselves?
- And how can big-name marquee players — the kind that makes a casual fan sit up and pay attention — be attracted to the ALW when there's a growing number of leagues elsewhere in the world offering longer seasons and more money in more desirable playing conditions than an Australian summer?
Chaos rounds like this past weekend are lightning-rods for casual viewers, but the primary driver of football culture is long-term, emotional connections to clubs and players.
The only way to achieve that is with time and opportunity.
Lengthening the season, growing the number of teams, expanding the sizes of squads, boosting the budgets of clubs: All of these administrative decisions create the ecosystem within which the real heartbeat of football — a fan's connection with their club — can blossom.
The sooner the ALW takes off the hand-break and capitalises on the chaos that has made it what it is, the bigger and better it can, and will, become.
