THANK God for Sydney FC. Those guys are our bunnies.

If you count pre-season matches (and to make my point statistically stronger, you know I’m going to), Phoenix have won five and drawn one of seven encounters against the so-called glory-boys of the A-League.

Friday’s victory was totally deserved. Regardless of whether John Kosmina thinks the penalty was lucky or not (and for the record, most of us missed it at actual speed, but thought it was definitely a spotty on replay), Phoenix dominated that match and would have been the unlucky ones had they not come home with all three points.

Phoenix are a strange beast. When you settle down to watch them play, there’s this nagging doubt that they’ll do what they did against Perth (twice) and Adelaide and simply not turn up. But then, there’s the rather exciting sense that they might actually play to their potential.

The game-plan on Friday was obvious – don’t let Sydney settle. The players did more chasing, harrying and hassling in the first fifteen minutes than they had in the previous two games combined.

Every player was committed to doing shuttles to close down the man with the ball. As a result, Sydney backed off, Phoenix gained the ascendancy and took control of the match.

Sydney, on the other hand, somehow morphed into the Phoenix of last week. They looked flat, and even though they created some chances, they were (by their standards) toothless in front of goal.

It was great to see Leo score. Talk about monkey off the back. Let’s hope the dam will burst now, giving way to a torrent of goals. OK, perhaps that’s a little optimistic, so instead let’s hope he doesn’t score just once in his next 39 matches. Tim Brown’s cross for that goal was superb and part of another excellent performance by a guy who’s growing with each game in the number six shirt.

Oddly, both wins over Sydney FC this A-League season have been achieved without skipper Andrew Durante. He was sick in bed when Phoenix won in Wellington in round six and he was MIA this time with a hamstring injury. It would be drawing an extremely long bow to suggest his absence had anything to do with the wins – it’s just an interesting oddity.

Provided he’s fit, Durante will obviously come back for the game against his old side Newcastle in a fortnight. Sadly, that means one of Manny Muscat, Karl Dodd or Ben Sigmund, all of who were very solid against Sydney, will miss out. It’ll probably be Muscat, with Sigmund again shuffling out to right-back, which is harsh on Manny because he’s the second-best natural fullback at the club. But Sigmund must play.

Sigmund must play. How many Phoenix fans would have thought at the midway point of the season, we’d be uttering those three words? Most fans had Siggy pegged as someone to call on if two of Durante, Dodd and McKain were unavailable. A last resort, a stop-gap measure, number 20ish in the squad’s pecking order. Now he’s one of the first names written on the team-sheet each week.

Siggy knows his limitations, but he also knows to be valuable at this level he has to make the most of the talents he does have. These include excellent aerial ability and the uncanny knack of rarely losing out in a one-on-one defensive situation.

But above all, he’s simply the most determined and committed player in the team week after week. It’s almost as though he’s waited so long in his career for the opportunity to play professionally that he doesn’t want to waste a second. Give me Ben Sigmund over Leilei Gao any day.

And so to the Jets in two weeks. Massive game. Back-to-back wins anyone?