ESSENDON
Heidelberg United ended the Royals’ 2025 season, and three weeks ago the Royals beat them to win the club’s first major trophy. Saturday is the third meeting of 2026, and this is the one with the Premiership attached to it.
The Royals sit second on 53 points from 24 games, one behind Box Hill United, but 10 goals better off at plus 46 against plus 36, and with 10 more scored, 73 to 63. Goal difference is the first tie-break in this competition, so level on points the Royals are Premiers. That is the whole shape of the run-in in a few numbers.
It is not in our own hands, though, and there is no sense pretending otherwise. Box Hill can reach 60 and the Royals can only reach 59, so the task is to win both and need Box Hill to drop points once. Their last two are away at Keilor Park, 12th, and away at Melbourne City, 14th. The encouragement is that Box Hill were held 1-1 at home by Avondale in Round 24, their first dropped points since June, and Keilor Park have just won 1-0 away at South Melbourne. Keilor Park host Box Hill at 3:00pm on Saturday, the same minute we kick off.
What Saturday can settle is the rest of it. A win guarantees a top-two finish, which brings the bye through the elimination round and a home preliminary final at Cross Keys. A draw offers no such guarantees, and a defeat paired with a Box Hill win ends the Premiership that afternoon.
Heidelberg arrive ninth on 29 points with nothing left to play for, which is not the same as nothing to prove. They were Premiers last season on 50 points, Dennis Georgakopoulos was named NPLW Coach of the Season, and he is still in charge. A nine-game winless run from Round 14 dropped them into mid-table, but they have won their last two, 2-0 away at Keilor Park and 2-1 at home to Melbourne City, and they are a better side on the road than at Olympic Village, with 22 goals scored away against 14 at home. Aya Sasaki and Jiyoun Seo lead their scoring on seven each. What they no longer have is Sawa Matsuda, whose 18 goals won the 2025 golden boot and would on their own be half of everything Heidelberg have scored this season.
The two 2026 meetings have gone one each way in feel. The league game at Olympic Village in May finished 1-1, Bronte Peel scoring on 38 minutes and Seo levelling on 79. Then on 1 August at the Home of the Matildas, Maggie Jenkins scored twice and took the Theresa Deas Medal as the Royals won 4-1 to lift the Nike FC Cup, with Kelli McGroarty scoring twice in the second half and Mischa Anderson converting a stoppage-time penalty.
The Royals come in on five straight league wins, six consecutive competitive wins with the cup final included, and 26 goals across them, the most recent a 5-1 at Preston. Cross Keys has been the base of it all year, 10 games there for eight wins, 36 scored and eight conceded. McGroarty is on 31 league goals, twelve clear of anyone else in the competition and 42 per cent of the club’s 73. That is the highest single-season tally in the NPLW since 2019 and equal fourth all time. For scale, last season’s golden boot was won on 18 by, as mentioned, Matsuda at Heidelberg.
Third meeting, biggest stakes, 3:00pm at Cross Keys. Come down.