Thankfully, heading into 2020, it appears the three belligerents from the footballing hotbed are still well placed to provide numerous storylines and barnstorming entertainment in the coming months.

Though their 2-1 defeat of Melbourne City in the annual Christmas Derby may have dealt a body-blow to City’s attempts to catch Sydney FC atop the A-League table, Victory’s triumph means that entering 2020, the three-way battle for Victoria supremacy remains well and truly alive.

With a bye week looming and the transfer window soon to open, conjecture had been that Kurz was coaching for his job on that Saturday at AAMI Park.

A loss could have easily seen his side slide to the bottom of the table at the end of 2019 and with – at a minimum – a 13-point gap between themselves and bitter-rivals City.

But it’s amazing what three points can do for a narrative.

MELBOURNE VICTORY'S CHANGING NARRATIVE

Now held out of the top-six only via goal difference, Victory is now well-positioned to return from their bye and begin to leverage their collection of talented individual parts into a lethal collective.

Most important on this journey will be Robbie Kruse.

Whereas he was just one of a number of Victory players to miss time at the beginning of the season, the Socceroo attacker’s absence, with the benefit of hindsight, was clearly felt in the opening weeks.

While Ola Toivonen remains the club’s most potent attacking threat as well as a powerful facilitator, his attempts to drag Victory to wins at the beginning of the campaign show that, for all his talent, he can’t do it alone.

In Kruse, he now has a partner in crime up front that is capable of manipulating opposing defences, taking some of the creative load and, in partnership with the Swede, properly incorporate the power of fellow attacker Andrew Nabbout.

Nonetheless, potential pratfalls exist.

With international signings so often proving the difference between winning or losing a title, offseason signings Jakob Poulsen, Migjen Basha and Kristijan Dobras have been poor in their first year at AAMI Park and – barring any mutual terminations in the coming weeks – will need to lift their games if the club maintains designs challenging for silverware.

His troubles injury and not form related, defender Tim Hoogland will need to get, and stay, healthy.

Moreover, while Victory does sit well-poised to leap into the top six, they also maintain just a five-point gap between themselves and the tenth and eleventh placed Brisbane Roar and Newcastle Jets – with those two sides having two games in hand.

A lean run of form could just as easily reignite the wobbles that defined their start to the season and, once again, pile the pressure on Kurz and his squad.

MELBOURNE CITY'S BOUNCEBACKABILITY

Looking across to Victory’s vanquished Christmas Derby foes at City, the time has once again come to respond to a difficult defeat.

Three times already City has reacted to a dispiriting loss in a positive manner: defeating Western United in the inaugural staging of the M80 Derby after being walloped in the FFA Cup Final by Adelaide United, defeating Western Sydney Wanderers 3-2 after collapsing against Brisbane Roar and hammering Newcastle Jets 4-0 a week after going down to Perth Glory.

To borrow a phrase from Ian Dowie, Head Coach Erick Mombaerts' side have demonstrated excellent bouncebackability so far.

Yet, at what point does the kudos given to a group for their ability to spring back from disappointment become damning with faint praise? Bouncebackability is certainly an excellent trait to have but even better would be to not need to bounce back to begin with.

City, based upon 2019's results, seem to have the best chance of the three Victorian clubs to claim silverware come to the end of the season.

They have a talented backline that blends both leadership and talent – Harrison Delbridge should be in Socceroos contention come 2020 – and their lethal attack, led by Jamie Maclaren, is one of the best in the land.

Indeed, when he's firing on all cylinders and well-supported by his teammates, Maclaren's predatory instincts make him one of, if not the, most lethal players in the competition. 

Assuredly, 2019/20 looms as the best chance City – or Heart before them – might have ever had to secure an A-League premiership or championship in their history.

Though they, at times, they can remain frustratingly blunt against an embedded defence – look at the Glory game for an example – they’re still capable of beating any other A-League side on their day.

Perhaps then, the biggest challenge for City will be if can they avoid ‘Hearting it’ in the coming months.

For some undefined reason through the competition’s history, almost every time that the A-League side based out of Bundoora – be they Heart or City – has been presented with a big moment they have subsequently gone to pieces.

Coaches, players, administrators and owners have come and gone but the curse lingers.

The biggest test that City faces could very well be with themselves.

And what of the new kids on the block?

WESTERN UNITED BRINGING FINALS TO GEELONG

Notwithstanding that questions will always be asked of a club thrown together in less than 12 months before being thrust onto the national stage, Western United has served as an excellent on-field addition to the competition in its opening two and half months.

Playing a style that sits in contrast with the prevailing A-League norms of pace and power, they have carved out a clear niche for themselves and sit third entering the final round of 2019, with Mark Rudan’s tactical stylings demonstrating just why the club targeted him as their inaugural boss.

United’s shunning of the dominant paradigm of Australian football, however, could just as much be driven by personnel as it is by philosophy.

Key early-season contributors Panagiotis Kone, Scott McDonald, Besart Berisha, Dario Jertec, Andrew Durante, Ersan Gülüm and the irrepressible Alessandro Diamanti are all on the wrong side of 30 and, for obvious reasons, not built to sustain punishing 90 minutes of hard-running week in and week out.

In a vacuum, such circumstances can be worked around. After all, the brain is always the quickest part of a human and no matter how fast one is, a well-hit ball will always move faster.

And indeed, should United prove capable of maintaining their early season form, then finals football – and possibly more – should be on its way to Geelong in 2019/20

Yet as Australia begins to approach the truly hot portion of the summer – where temperatures above thirty degrees become an expectation – allowances will need to be made to keep players healthy by necessity.

The challenges of doing so have already been apparent in the opening stages of the campaign, with the likes of McDonald, Kone, Gülüm and Josh Risdon all going down with injuries.

Whereas squad rotation and minute-management are the most obvious solution to this problem, that in and of itself creates further challenges for Rudan.

Attempting to manage a locker room that, to a more extreme degree than most other A-League clubs, seems to be divided between veterans and players in the formative years, striking a delicate balance between the necessities of man-management and ego will be a potentially season-defining challenge.

Berisha’s reaction to being substituted off against Central Coast Mariners in round seven was a clear insight into the volatility that well-travelled, established players can display when faced with the prospect of a benching.

The sensational stories that have accompanied McDonald’s absence after he went down with an Achilles injury further demonstrate the destabilising power that public conjecture can hold when a veteran is absent.  

As the season progresses further, young players, who were no doubt drawn to Melbourne’s west with promises that an expansion side offers a quicker path to senior minutes, may also begin to become restless should Rudan persist with veterans that are clearly struggling in the stifling conditions.

United, as do Victory and City, have unique challenges that they must overcome to get the most out of the remaining weeks of the season.

They’re all capable of meeting them but are also just as capable as being overwhelmed by them.

It should make for a fascinating few months of football beginning with this weekend, as City look to hone their bouncebackability away to league-leaders Syndey FC and United, in their first game in Ballarat, welcome burgeoning rivals Wellington to town.