During his seven seasons at Central Coast Mariners, Alex Wilkinson played and lost in three Grand Finals.

The first was the inaugural A-League season in 2005-06, when Steve Corica’s shot from a Dwight Yorke pass gave Sydney FC a 1-0 win in the decider.

In the 2007-08 campaign, Mark Bridge's goal for Newcastle Jets gave Wilkinson his second runners up trophy. While the third decider loss came in 2010-2011 when the Gosford side succumbed to Ange Postecoglou’s Brisbane Roar.

Sadly the season after Wilkinson departed Central Coast, the club he captained won their maiden Grand Final title in 2012- 2013.

And after being the bridesmaid on three previous occasions, Willkinson is hoping to snare an A-League Championship at the fourth attempt.

“I won a couple of titles with Jeonbuck FC in Korea but I wasn’t here when the Mariners won their Grand Final,” he said.

“I won the Premiership a couple of times with Central Coast but winning the Grand Final is something I definitely want to achieve and the opportunity to do that doesn’t come along all that often.

 “We’ve put ourselves in such a good position and I’m confident that this could be the year I can get my first A-League title which would be fantastic.”

With Wilkinson in his mid-thirties, the 2014 Socceroos World Cup defender shows no sign of age slowing him down and feels in his prime thanks to the Sydney FC backroom staff.

“I’m really enjoying it and it’s been a great season so far, he said.

“At 32 you definitely start to head into the twilight of you career I suppose. I guess when you are winning you don’t notice the heavy legs.

“We’ve got a great strength and conditioning team at Sydney that makes sure all the boys are peaking on match days and we do have quite a few guys over the age of 30.

“When you get to that age you have to look after the loads and the load management and we’ve got a team at Sydney that are very good at doing that.

“With finals to come our squad has still got a lot of improvement to go. If each individual can improve 5-10% across the board it will lift the whole team performance and you will see the best of Sydney FC.”

The Sky Blues' high pressing game has been a feature throughout their history making campaign and Wilkinson is assured the Sky Blues tactical approach will provide Sydney with success in the finals.

“While the overall structure in the way we play is usually pretty much the same, every game is different,” he said.

“Arnie is huge on the tactical side of the game and every team we play against we tweak things a little bit to cater for their strengths and weaknesses.

"In that regard, we do change it up from game to game and vary it a little bit.

“But I guess it’s on the other teams to come and work that out and I’m more than confident that if a team does, we’ll have the answer for it and we’ll overcome it anyway.”