ESSENDON
The rain arrived in Reservoir at almost exactly the moment the game did, after a dry day across Melbourne, and for the opening twenty minutes it was the smaller of the Royals’ problems.
Preston Lions were the better side in that spell, and they should have been out of sight before the Royals had worked out what sort of night it was going to be. There was an early warning at the other end, a turnover forced high up the pitch on four minutes that the Preston keeper spilled, with the follow-up hacked off the goal line. After that the home side took over. Fiorina Iaria cut in off the right on twelve minutes and delivered, the shot at the near post was spilled, and Hollie Massey turned in the loose ball. Preston then struck the crossbar and the post through Valentine Pursey inside the next five minutes, and with the rain by now heavy and near horizontal and the surface slick underneath it, a side sitting eleventh had every right to feel it should have been leading by two or three. The Royals rode their luck and knew it.
They also needed their opponents to keep missing, and Preston’s keeper had one more moment in her, charging bravely off her line to smother a one-on-one against Paige Kingston-Hogg on the half hour. What eventually turned the half was a piece of vision from Grace Maher, who was singled out by the broadcast all night and whose long searching ball on forty-four minutes split the Preston line for Bronte Peel to tuck away. A team that had been second best for most of the half went in level with it, which is usually the sign that something is about to give.
It gave nine minutes into the second period, and it gave spectacularly. Ayano Koizumi struck from long range for only her third goal of the season, and the noise from the Royals bench told you exactly what they made of it. From that point the match stopped being a contest and became a procession. Maggie Jenkins, back in the side after All-Star duty and announced by Perth Glory for the coming A-League Women season, kept pressing after a heavy touch and a half-clearance on sixty-two minutes, won the ball back and chipped the onrushing keeper. Five minutes later she turned provider for Kelli McGroarty, whose diagonal run took her clean through the Preston back line.
McGroarty’s second, on eighty-one minutes, came from a short corner routine and a pinpoint far-post delivery from Cobi Wilbert, with the striker waiting where she has been waiting all season. Wilbert is nineteen and wore the captain’s armband for what is believed to be the first time, with the senior leadership group unavailable, and she finished the night with the assist for the fifth goal. That is a decent evening’s work for anyone, let alone someone doing the job for the first time in the rain in the middle of a title race.
The numbers behind McGroarty are the ones worth sitting with. Those two goals took her to thirty-one in the league this season, which is the highest tally anyone has managed in this competition since 2019 and leaves her equal fourth on the all-time single-season list. She has now scored in seven consecutive league matches, her last blank coming way back in Round 12 on the ninth of May. For scale, last season’s golden boot was won on eighteen. Around her, Akeisha Sandhu put in a defensive shift that left her visibly spent by the end, and Mercedes McNabb came on with eight minutes to go to a loud cheer from her teammates as she works her way back from injury.
The wider picture is the reason this one mattered so much. Box Hill United were held to a 1-1 draw by Avondale on the same night, so a fifth straight league win lifts the Royals to fifty-three points from twenty-four games, seventeen wins, two draws, five defeats and a goal difference of plus forty-six. That is one point behind the leaders with two rounds to play. Preston stay eleventh on twenty-six.
Heidelberg United at home comes next, then South Melbourne away to finish, and the Nike FC Cup already sits in the cabinet as the club’s first major trophy. The Royals 20s set the tone earlier in the evening by winning the curtain-raiser after going a goal down. Two games left, one point in it.