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Opinion
Aside from the pending crowning of Melbourne City as premiers, the current A-League Men season is bordering on comical in its unpredictability and parity.
I am not too sure there has ever been a football league anywhere in the world, where with just three rounds remaining in the regular season, the last placed team still had a chance to win it.
Rather bizarrely, Melbourne Victory could still win the championship and as unlikely as that may sound, will be saying as much internally and wondering, why not?
It is simply the most astonishing of seasons, where bottom of the ladder Victory have seven wins and four draws from 23 matches. Current sixth placed Sydney FC has won just eight times and been held to five draws, whilst second placed Adelaide, impressive all season, has just eleven wins.
It will all make for interesting reflection come season’s end, when teams lament the odd point dropped here or there and a vastly different ladder position had things panned out more favourably.
Late goals, such as the two we saw in the Western Sydney Wanderers 2-2 draw with the Bulls last weekend, have swung fortunes of clubs in an instant.
Macarthur were seconds from moving within goal difference of the top six, before Brandon Borrello pounced late and sent the Bulls tumbling back down the ladder, before settling in eleventh.
Western United lived the same slide, belted by the Mariners at home with seventh on the ladder a real possibility, before ending up in tenth come the end of the weekend and the big winners in Round 23 were Brisbane Roar, jumping from last to eighth.
If Brisbane reproduce that result this Sunday against the Phoenix, they could be inside the six, pending Sydney FC’s result, with the notion of moving from the bottom of the ladder and into the mix for the title in the space of a fortnight a challenging one to consider.
Each week it appears likely that a challenger or two will be killed off from the race, yet, with timely draws and almost no consistency in performance, the game of musical chairs has continued.
It is a positive for fans able to attend their team’s matches late in the season with everything to play for, but a nightmare for tippers, punters and those of us working on matches in real-time that shift dramatically with late goals and send-offs.
It has also been a challenge for the broadcaster, with the zero predictability unfolding this season, aside from a fair expectation that Melbourne City would be a handy team, meaning that blockbuster matches have sometimes fallen in odd timeslots.
Such is the case this weekend, with Central Coast hosting City at 5pm on Saturday, in what would obviously be the match of the round were the draw makers able to see the future. Instead, the Wanderers and Victory will feature in the Saturday night prime-time, also an important game, but not the marquee match-up that we will see in Gosford.
Round 26 will feature two massive top-six clashes, played concurrently on a Friday night. Adelaide will host Central Coast and Melbourne City the Wanderers, with the top four placings potentially decided by the results.
Then, a match that could have zero impact on the finals is slated for the Saturday night prime-time slot when the Victory host the Roar. Should one team need a win to make finals, it could be a belter, yet Sydney and Perth do seem more likely to sneak into the six at this point in time.
Such unfortunate moments in the scheduling have popped up from time to time and are certainly no fault of the APL. How on earth were they to know that three weeks from the finals there would still be so much undecided and to play out?
Of course, a close league is the ideal. Yet is the absurd parity we are seeing this season detrimental to excellence, where quality teams pull away from others simply not at their level?
Could it be argued that, apart from the obvious quality of Melbourne City and their deserved favouritism, there is something bland and homogenous about the others, all battling away in a pool of competence, yet a pool lacking some big fish that really stamp their authority on the league?
I’m not sure.
It has been a hell of a ride and one that appears likely to continue down to the final weekend. Best of all, it has been fun to relish in the unpredictability.
However, I wonder if you can sometimes have too much of a good thing.