Central Coast Mariners v Melbourne Victory: A-League Men grand final – live | A-League Men

6 mins: Victory are seeing much more of the ball and executing plenty of neat triangles in the middle third. The Mariners are more direct, looking to profit from turnovers, and when they secure the ball the volume from the crowd raises a number of decibels.

4 mins: Victory have had a couple of goal kicks, and on both occasions they’ve committed to playing out from the back, backing themselves under pressure. The first attempt down the right was shut down by Farrell, the second, on the left, managed to force through the lines to Machach who roams forward, breaks into the box and squeezes away a weak shot that’s cleared by the sliding Kaltak.

2 mins: Both sides tear off at breakneck speed, competing fiercely for every second ball. Unsurprisingly, there’s little football of note to talk about, but young Jacob Farrell can feel proud of some good early work on Daniel Arzani in what’s likely to be one of the key duels of the evening.

Kick off!

Pregame formalities have been taken care of. Kick-off is imminent.

Out come the teams, down the tunnel, past the championship trophy and into a cauldron of noise at a packed Industree Group Stadium.

A-League referee of the year Alex King will take charge of his first grand final.

Both teams are in their home kits tonight. That means the Mariners are top to toe in sandy yellow, Victory one long shock of navy blue.

Leigh Broxham has not made it into Victory’s matchday squad, so he will end his extraordinary 18-year career with a league-leading 386 appearances.

It is still, cool, and dry under the lights in Gosford. A full house is forecast, with the total attendance likely to set a new record for Industree Group Stadium after some extra seating was installed at the palm tree, pushing the capacity over 20,000. However, that does mean the famous sauce bottles have been shifted out of their regular vantage points.

While today is a celebration for domestic football in Australia, it is impossible to overlook what has been another chastening season for the A-League.

The APL remains in omnicrisis, bungling its budget and communications as it fails abysmally at converting the promise of independence. And while there’s not a lot they can do about fan misbehaviour or the alleged conduct of players, it’s hard to avoid the creeping feeling of the competition succumbing to another doom spiral.

That feeling would undoubtedly be more visceral if the A-League received the sort of mainstream media coverage it grew accustomed to a decade ago. But the demand for content has evaporated, making the competition absent from broader conversations around Australian sport – unless something goes wrong – and leading to the near extinction of dedicated football writers and analysts.

The Victory squad is so chock full of potential it’s as if they were deliberately trying to shine a light on the failure of the Australian system to convert promising long youngsters into established overseas stars. At one time or another Daniel Arzani, Jake Brimmer, Connor Chapman, Ryan Teague, Ben Folami, and Chris Ikonomidis have all been hailed as the next big thing in Australian football. All have spent time in the national team system. All have spent time in foreign leagues. All are still under 30.

While the Mariners are back in the grand final for a second year in a row, this is a very different iteration of the club. Head coach Nick Montgomery left for Hibernian, while key players from 2023 including Jason Cummings, Sammy Silvera, Nectar Triantis, Beni N’Kololo, James McGarr, and Marco Tulio have all left. It is a reflection of the strength of the organisation and marks a stunning turnaround for a club that were a basket case for a decade not so long ago.

Melbourne Victory XI

Central Coast Mariners XI

If you prefer your grand final narratives in visual form, David Squires will never let you down.

If the Mariners are the good news story Australian football has been crying out for, Melbourne Victory are comfortable adopting the role of party poopers, as Joey Lynch reports.

“We don’t mind if the rest of the country’s supporting them,” said Victory winger Nishan Velupillay. “If you want to put us as the bad guys, we don’t mind taking that title.”

The league’s smallest club and smallest market hosting their biggest event might challenge everything we think we know about what a grand final should be, but it offers a purity that money can’t buy.

Paul Williams is our man in sauce bottle city, and he’s cast his eye over the unlikely dominant force in Australian football.

Preamble

Jonathan Howcroft