The A-League's greatest battle for supremacy hits all-time-high

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.