On a weekend where the term “invincibles” echoed around the Premier League, the mantle landed squarely on the shoulders of W-League premiership winners Melbourne City.
Winning their first premiers plate since 2016, having not lost in the league for over a year and playing in the last game of the regular season, City were in line for further possible honours. Having scored the most goals and conceded the fewest, they found themselves shaping up to challenge for other milestones: their own record of 731 minutes without conceding a goal, and a possible first golden boot winner since Larissa Crummer in the same 2015-16 campaign.
The clean sheet record attempt was scuppered by a couple of Brisbane Roar youngsters, as Indiah Paige Riley and Hollie Palmer combined to score past Lydia Williams for the first time in 729 minutes. Just two minutes away from equalling their own record, it proved the one City will not claim this season.
The chance to reach a milestone at the other end of the pitch was also relinquished, as Emily van Egmond squandered a couple of gilt-edged chances to stake her claim for the golden boot. As she was harshly called offside late in the encounter, Melbourne Victory striker and commentator Natasha Dowie, with an eye on her share of this season’s golden boot and her tongue firmly in cheek, said: “That’s why you can tell she’s a midfield player not a proper striker.”
“Even in her interviews she says that she’s not bothered about scoring and it’s about the team winning – and obviously everyone wants to win first and foremost but for us ruthless strikers’ goals are important.”
Yet for City this season the lack of ruthlessness has been a team trait, not just one individual. Their opening-day draw against Newcastle Jets meant equalling their 2015-16 points record was not possible from the outset, and perhaps this became something of an inevitability; such records and prizes have become incidentals rather than targets.
City’s efforts this season have drawn many comparisons to their swashbuckling 2015-2016 predecessors – albeit perhaps more from a statistical rather than aesthetic point of view. But it’s worth noting how the league has changed in the years since City first burst on the W-League scene: the first collective bargaining agreement came into play for the 2017-18 season while other clubs have stepped up their resourcing and the marquee player mechanism has arrived.
Having consistently pushed against the limits of what can be achieved in a season, the question now becomes where to next for the Bundoora-based behemoth, just as much as where to next for the W-League. It’s not unreasonable to wonder – for all that City have achieved this season, and for all the club has been able to offer its players within the constraints of a short league season – whether the club might be on the precipice of reaching its own limits if the 2020-21 season format remains the same.
Perhaps some change in personnel is to be anticipated. The club held onto their stars during the midseason transfer window, but it is not inconceivable that some players, having reclaimed the club’s perch atop the W-League, might find next season the appropriate point from which to move on – namely to Europe’s burgeoning professional leagues.
Despite that allure, Melbourne City Football Club could yet offer these players enough of a project and investment in their own development and careers to keep them in the W-League – in contrast to their prospective play-off rivals, who saw top talent leave mid-season.
But that is a challenge to be navigated another time. More pressing now are the playoffs, in which City to date have always won when they’ve been in the top four. Will that record hold? It’s worth noting that for every break in the 2019-20 season, be it a bye or international break, City’s campaign of ruthless consistency cranked up a notch – be that winning games via single goal margins prior to their round seven bye, to rapidly boosting their goal difference in subsequent rounds.
This comes, of course, as a stark contrast to their semi-final opponents Western Sydney Wanderers, for whom the last international break represented a potential season up-ender. Yet this time around City have eight players on international duty (six Matildas, plus New Zealand’s Rebekah Stott and Claire Emslie of Scotland), while the Wanderers have none.
For the optimist, this week’s international break might offer something of a leveller of sorts. If nothing else, the Wanderers might be buoyed by the fact that 2019-20 has become their own record-breaking season, and find that the return of perennial underdogs mindset instilled with their North Carolina Courage imports suits them more than the international break suits City.
