ESSENDON
A ladder tells you what ought to happen on a Saturday afternoon. It has never once told a team what actually will.
Bentleigh Greens came to Cross Keys sitting 13th, with two wins from 23 and a goal difference of -60, and for 45 minutes they made a nonsense of every one of those numbers. The Royals eventually won this 5-2, which will read like a comfortable afternoon to anyone who only ever sees the final score. It was nothing of the sort until the hour mark.
The opening went to script. The Royals went ahead 14 minutes in, an own goal from Yuka Sato putting the visitors behind against the run of their own game plan. Whatever confidence that handed the home side lasted about sixty seconds. Mia Otero levelled almost immediately, and a fixture that was supposed to be a procession suddenly had a pulse.
Isabella Sewards restored the lead on twenty-one minutes, and again there was a sense that the Royals would now simply pull away, the way they did when these two met at Kingston Heath in April and Essendon won 7-0. Bentleigh had other ideas. Cristina Sousa struck three minutes before the interval to make it 2-2, and the teams went in level with the crowd rather quieter than it had been an hour earlier.
Whatever was said at half time worked. The Royals came back out and took the game away from Bentleigh in a way they had not managed in the first period, and they did it without ever looking frantic about it. Kelli McGroarty put them back in front on 54 minutes. Grace Maher made it 4-2 on 70. McGroarty returned for her second and the Royals’ fifth on 85, and by then the contest had long since drained out of the afternoon.
Three goals, no reply, and the visitors held to nothing in the second half. That is the part of this performance worth holding onto, because it is the part that has been missing on the bad days this season. The Royals have been the highest scoring side in the competition all year, 68 goals now from 23 matches, and scoring has rarely been the problem. Responding when a game refuses to go the way it should has been.
They needed the win, too, and not in an abstract sense. Box Hill United went to the Veneto Club on the same afternoon and beat FC Bulleen Lions 3-2, so the gap at the top stayed exactly where it was. The Royals sit second on 50 points, three behind Box Hill with three rounds to play, having now won four in a row since the back-to-back defeats to Bulleen and Avondale in late June and early July. There is no margin in that run for a dropped afternoon against a side in Bentleigh’s position, which is precisely what this had the makings of at half time.
The three goals do carry a second value, though, and it is one worth keeping an eye on over the next three weeks. Goal difference now reads plus 42 to the Royals and plus 36 to Box Hill. If these two finish level on points, and on current form that is a live possibility, the Royals are the side sitting above the line. Every goal at this end of a season is worth something beyond the three points it helps secure.
All of this comes a week after the best night in the club’s history, the 4-1 win over Heidelberg United at the Home of the Matildas that delivered the Nike FC Cup, the first senior women’s silverware Essendon Royals has ever won. The risk after a night like that is obvious enough, and a flat first half against the side second from bottom is roughly what it looks like when it starts to bite. That the response came inside the same ninety minutes rather than a week later is the encouraging part.
What comes next does not get any kinder. Preston Lions away on Friday night, Heidelberg United at home the following weekend, then South Melbourne at Lakeside to finish. Preston have taken points off the Royals once already this season, the 1-1 draw at Cross Keys back in May, and Lakeside in late August is nobody’s idea of a gentle way to end a title race.
Still, a team that spends 45 minutes being frustrated by a team in the bottom half and then puts three past them without conceding is a team that has learned something about itself. The Royals will not get to choose whether the last three weeks are comfortable. On this evidence, they have at least worked out what to do when they are not.