Juric’s side, carefully nurtured and assembled over a nearly half-decade of planning, have their validation. This Sydney team now has its grand final win. This team is too special and too good not to win a grand final.” We needed to win a grand final with this team. “Being in six consecutive and only winning one… we needed to win with this team. 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. Suddenly, that sustained period of dominance may have begun to look incomplete. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.ĭefeat 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. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. 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.īut 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. More importantly, the Harboursiders now definitively stand alone as the most successful club in the competition’s history.Īdmittedly, for a team that has been as dominant as the Sky Blues, that honorific statement barely needed this latest result to qualify it. Sydney are champions, having become the first team to complete the premiership-championship double since 2016 and just the fifth time overall. 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.įittingly, 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. Once Princess Ibini skipped inside the penalty area and was awarded a penalty she would convert to make it 3-0, United were done. We let it down two weeks ago but we knew it was in us and we showed it today. “We’ve stood up against a lot of teams this year that have tried to bully us. “We talked about not getting bullied,” said Sydney coach Ante Juric.
Sydney’s commitment and organisation were increasingly suffocating any green and black attack. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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