Milos Ninkovic’s winning penalty the perfect ending to script he has written all season

THE fact it was Milos Ninkovic who struck home the winning spotkick added the perfect ending to the script he has written all season.

JUST when you thought their chance had passed, they went and saved the best til last.

Sydney FC are the A-League champions, crowned in the most nerve-racking of circumstances after beating Melbourne Victory on penalties.

The fact it was Milos Ninkovic who struck home the winning spotkick added the perfect ending to the script he has written all season.

Ninkovic buries the winning penalty. Picture: Brett Costello

At the end the players were almost too exhausted to celebrate, every sinew strained, but the emotion was crystallised joy for them and their supporters. The fact that it was possibly their least convincing performance of the season will matter not a jot as the celebrations go on for days.

In the end natural justice dictated that the Sky Blues had to be the winners of the season, so great has been their domination of the past seven months. It was the second time they have beaten their foes from the Bleak City on penalties, and expunged the memory of losing the grand final against them two years ago.

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That day Sydney had subsided with little more than a whimper, simply brushed aside by a Mark Milligan-inspired Victory, and the strategy of Kevin Muscat’s side was even more naked here. From the first seconds the game became a series of angry confrontations, five yellow cards being shown inside the first 44 minutes.

Ninkovic after hitting the winner.

The tactic was obvious, to shake Sydney’s composure and hence disrupt the football that had brooked so little opposition all season. Sydney were hardly innocents themselves, but in getting drawn in to the skirmishes they were playing into the visitors’ hands.

Clearly the Sky Blues were equally determined that this time they would not give an inch. The arrival of Alex Brosque’s studs into Daniel Georgievski in the first minute set the tone for a tempestuous, adrenaline-fulled contest. Hahid Ben Khalfallah planted an elbow into Rhyan Grant’s face, and minutes later Grant returned the compliment with an off-the-ball shove.

Vukovic hoists Sydney’s hero. Picture: Brett Costello

When Ninkovic was drawn into the emotion, Victory’s strategy was working a treat. The Serbian playmaker had been limited to a handful of cameos on the ball, rather than his usual starring role, and his angry reaction to Leigh Broxham’s foul sparked a melee that served only to underline how Sydney were losing their cool.

Even Graham Arnold was dragged in, berating referee Jarred Gillett as the teams left at halftime precisely because he could see his team losing its way. In the stands there was a nervous tension born of the fear deep in every Sydney FC fan — that they might fall short of the ultimate prize after sweeping all before them until this point.

The fact that Sydney clearly had lost their mojo in the face of Victory’s intensity just accentuated that feeling. When Lawrence Thomas in the Victory goal leapt to turn aside a volley from the substitute David Carney it was the Victory keeper’s first serious save in exactly an hour of football.

Ninko and his happy coach.

Sydney were playing passes they hadn’t all season, forcing Alex Brosque and Bobo to compete for headers with the steepling figures of Nick Ansell and James Donachie in the Victory defence. Nor had they been able to apply a tourniquet of pressure that has been their hallmark this season, at least until the 69th minute when finally they found a route back into the contest.

Sydney’s bench has been a potent force in these games this season, with Carney’s double defeating Victory in November and Bernie Ibini winning the reverse contest at Etihad. The great irony is that Carney would not have been on the pitch had Ibini not pulled a hamstring in the dying seconds of the semi-final, yet his involvement in the equaliser was pivotal.