Sydney's defence is worthy of a final commendation

Sydney FC play the Melbourne Victory in the A-League Grand Final tonight, and in doing so will place the final gleaming touches on the club’s greatest ever season.

A victory would cement 2016-17 as the most dominant single-season campaign in the history of the competition; even the Brisbane Roar’s 2010-11 double-winning campaign, marred – like Sydney’s this season – by a single defeat, would be bettered by Graham Arnold’s current lot.

That Roar group still holds the mantle of the greatest team ever, with their 10-11 and 11-12 back-to-back crowns still the greatest sustained period of footballing excellence seen in this country, but as far as single seasons go, Sydney’s is better.

Why? Well, the Roar in 10-11 scored three more goals than Sydney have this season- with the final still to play, mind you – but they conceded 14 more. Roarcelona served up as standard the most attractive style the A-League has managed to forge, wholly deserving of their punny moniker, and that may hold more currency in the minds of the devoted aesthetes.

But the stolidity of Arnold’s team, their obdurateness and poise at the back has been quite astonishing, and is worthy of one last back-slap before the season ends.

Firstly, the unit that started the season, conceding just five goals in their first ten games, was one the majority of whom were new to the club.

Alex Wilkinson, Michael Zullo and Danny Vukovic all arrived over the off-season, and were all instantly slotted into the starting line-up to join Matt Jurman and Rhyan Grant. A defensive chemistry the likes of which managers usually need to brew over multiple uninterrupted seasons bubbled up immediately, and when Jurman departed for Korea mid-season, Jordy Buijs arrived and seamlessly filled the void.

Rhyan Grant has made 152 appearances for Sydney. The three other defenders, and goalkeeper, that will line-up next to him in the Grand Final have made a combined 93 appearances for Sydney.

Crucial to a great defence is trust, both in the system and in the comrades beside you; Sydney’s unit have no right to be this coherent, this consistently intact after so little time together.

Sydney end the season with an average goals-conceded rate of 0.44 per game. The next best team was the Victory, with 1.15. 16 times Sydney held their opponents scoreless, and another 10 times to just a single goal. Yes, the mathletes in the readership will be able to work out that that leaves one single game this season where Sydney allowed the opposition to score more than once. It was against the Mariners in January, and they still won 3-2.

This has not been a low-scoring season for the A-league either. The Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City both scored 49 goals this season, which was good enough for joint-third in the league. In four of the past five seasons that amount would be good enough for second or first place.

The 53 goals scored by Perth this season is a total only bettered by two other teams in a season, over the past five years: the 15-16 Melbourne City, and the 14-15 title-winning Victory.

Perth took on Sydney FC this season in Round 6, having scored 11 goals in their previous five games; they lost 4-1, and their only goal was generously donated to them by Sydney’s Rhyan Grant.

The Sydney defence limited Perth to five shots, one on target, while attempting 17 shots of their own, with more than half of them hitting the mark. Sydney and Perth met again in the finals last week, with Kenny Lowe’s team coming off a run of three straight wins – two to end the regular season, and one over Melbourne City in the opening round of the finals – having scored a barely believable 10 goals in those three games.

They were trampled 3-0 by Sydney, rendered utterly toothless, again managing just a single shot on target. Diego Castro, one of the league’s most lethal attackers, was placed in a sky blue straitjacket. Sydney, twice, halted a goal-scoring monster in their tracks.

And, while the rest of their colleagues were focused on stifling any and all of the division’s best offensive players, Grant and Zullo managed to contribute nine assists between them.

As a comparison, that’s more than double assists than all of the Melbourne clubs’ starting fullbacks have managed this season – Daniel Georgievski, Jason Geria, Joshua Rose and Ivan Franjic have laid on four between all of them.

A key part of Sydney’s attacking play depends on the full-backs surging into advanced wide positions, and it’s the diligence and discipline of central midfielders Brandon O’Neill and Josh Brillante that has ensured this facet of Sydney’s attack doesn’t result in a defensive frailty.

Their covering, especially O’Neill’s, has been excellent; both Brillante and O’Neill won more tackles and swooped in for more interceptions than any of the league’s other top defensive midfielders – Neil Kilkenny, Rostyn Griffiths and Matt McKay – as well as contributing heavily to the attack, creating more chances than all of those players too.

This slab of stats isn’t as pleasing as one of Roarcelona’s gorgeous team-goals. Sydney’s defensive dominance won’t be given a gilded shrine, or even a shady spot, in the garden of Australia’s collective footballing memory. But it has given Sydney the platform to launch the most commanding title tilt in their history, a bullish crusade that they can crown in glittering silver tonight.