Not even 20 minutes were on the clock in Sunday’s title decider, but the contest already hinted at a Sydney FC procession. Twice within the opening stages, Mackenzie Hawkesby delivered pinpoint corners onto the head of Madison Haley, and twice the American striker made telling contributions; first to send a bullet header into the back of the Western United net and then to keep the ball alive for Natalie Tobin to nod home in her 100th game.
After being forced to wait 179 minutes for their first goal of the finals series, the 2023 A-League Women premiers were cruising, and thoughts of an anxious wait for another breakthrough washed off them in waves. Any hopes United had of dragging their opponents into a war of attrition and eking out a win with sheer grit and bloody-mindedness were gone. The game was now to be played on Sky Blue terms.
To their credit, the expansion side battled to get back into the game and for a brief period, inspired by Golden Boot winner Hannah Keane, they managed to ask some questions. But Sydney, after being physically bullied by United in a qualifying final defeat a fortnight ago, matched their opponents, got in their faces and were now winning the physical battles.
In the 53rd minute, a long ball forward was collected superbly by Keane, only for Sydney captain Tobin to immediately put a body on her back. With nowhere to go, the American was forced to try to hook the ball around the corner for a teammate, only for Rachel Lowe to steal the ball and launch another Sydney attack. It was illustrative. Sydney’s commitment and organisation were increasingly suffocating any green and black attack.
“We talked about not getting bullied,” said Sydney coach Ante Juric. “We’ve stood up against a lot of teams this year that have tried to bully us. We let it down two weeks ago but we knew it was in us and we showed it today. Be strong and compete for everything.”
Once Princess Ibini skipped inside the penalty area and was awarded a penalty she would convert to make it 3-0, United were done. As the lone remaining player from Sydney’s last title win in 2018 was embraced by fans spilling onto the pitch behind the goal, Ibini’s opponents trudged back to the halfway line, cursing a penalty that they believed should not have been given, and with dreams of a fairytale debut season dashed.
Fittingly, it was best-on-ground Haley who put a cherry on the cake with her second in stoppage time, her presence in the box again proving decisive, just as it had been in the opening stages.
Sydney are champions, having become the first team to complete the premiership-championship double since 2016 and just the fifth time overall. More importantly, the Harboursiders now definitively stand alone as the most successful club in the competition’s history.
Admittedly, for a team that has been as dominant as the Sky Blues, that honorific statement barely needed this latest result to qualify it. This is, after all, a team that has made the finals in every single season the competition has been staged and won five premierships – including the last three.
But there was a nagging feeling heading into Sunday’s game in Parramatta that still anything could happen, such is the nature of deciding a league title via an end-of-season playoff rather than on a first-past-the-post basis.
Defeat to United in a one-off decider would have made it just one grand final win in six straight attempts, and four losses in a row. Suddenly, that sustained period of dominance may have begun to look incomplete. The players felt it too.
“Relief. Winning three premierships is huge but at the end of the day, in Australian football, winning a grand final is the ultimate prize,” said Hawkesby. “Being in six consecutive [grand finals] and only winning one… we needed to win with this team. We needed to win a grand final with this team. This team is too special and too good not to win a grand final.”
This Sydney team now has its grand final win. Juric’s side, carefully nurtured and assembled over a nearly half-decade of planning, have their validation. And with that validation, the ALW trophy’s destination, once again, is New South Wales.
