ESSENDON
Promotion pushes are not won on the nights everything goes to plan. They are won on the nights a two-goal lead evaporates and a team has to find the character to win it all over again, and that is exactly the night the Royals had at Cross Keys.
Essendon came into Friday knowing what home advantage was supposed to look like, and for half an hour they delivered it in full. Anthony Trajkoski opened the scoring on ten minutes to settle the crowd early, and by the 29th minute Takumi Niwa had made it two, the Royals cruising and Box Hill United chasing shadows. It was the fast start they had been after, the perfect answer to a side sitting fifth and carrying enough quality to hurt anyone given a way in.
The trouble with a two-goal lead is that it invites a response, and Box Hill found one before the interval. Emilio Varelas pulled a goal back on 34 minutes, and a contest that had looked settled was suddenly alive again heading into the break. The visitors carried that momentum into the second half, and when Nicholas Weller levelled it at 2-2 on 52 minutes, the whole complexion of the night had changed. From cruising to clinging on inside twenty minutes, Essendon were now in a real fight against a top-half side that fancied the comeback.
This was the passage that told you something about this group. A younger or less certain team folds here, chasing the game they had already half-won and leaving gaps at the back for a side with the confidence to punish them. The Royals did the opposite. They steadied, kept their shape, and backed themselves to find the moment that would settle it, and in the 86th minute Frank Mulhern provided it.
His goal restored the lead with the game deep into its final stretch, a decisive late blow in front of the home support that Box Hill had no time to answer.
The closing minutes were not comfortable, and they were not meant to be. A yellow card to Bradley Norton on 88 minutes was a marker of how hard Essendon had to work to protect what they had, and they saw the rest of it out with the concentration the situation demanded. There were no penalties and no sending-offs to muddy the result. Just three points banked the hard way, on a night that asked a proper question and got a proper answer.
Beyond the ninety minutes, this one carried weight for two reasons. It settles a score, for a start. Box Hill were the side that beat Essendon 1-0 back in March, and there is a particular satisfaction in turning that around on your own ground with the stakes this high. More importantly, it keeps the promotion race firmly in the Royals’ hands. The win lifts Essendon to 37 points and holds third place in VPL Men 2, keeping them locked into both the automatic-promotion chase and the playoff picture with six rounds still to play. Malvern City on 40 and Goulburn Valley Suns on 39 sit above them, both with games in hand, so the margins are fine and every result matters from here.
It is a result that fits the run Essendon have been on rather than standing apart from it. This is a side that went to then-leaders Malvern City in Round 17 and won 4-2, then drew away at Bayside last time out to keep its position intact. Box Hill arrived fifth, a genuine top-half outfit, so there was nothing routine about beating them, and doing it after being pegged back to 2-2 says as much about the group’s nerve as any of the more comfortable wins.
Six rounds remain, the two sides above are within reach, and the Royals have shown again that they can win the nights that do not go smoothly. That is the quality promotion campaigns are built on, and Essendon have it. Now the job is to keep it going.