The top-two finishers of the regular season both won their away legs of the 2024/25 semi-finals, making an Auckland-Melbourne City Grand Final at Mount Smart Stadium on May 31 more than likely.
Western United 0-3 Melbourne City
Moving the first leg of this fixture away from Western United's Tarneit home to AAMI Park was always expected to play into Melbourne City's hands, but the manner in which City made the most of their opportunities suggests the venue probably didn't matter to that extent.
They didn't dominate the possession (50-50), the shots on target count (4-4) or the expected goal projection (1.36 to 1.22) and yet registered a final scoreline that on the surface looked like a one-sided encounter.
City manager Aurelio Vidmar admitted his side "scored at the right times ... and when we were suffering a little bit" and wasn't willing to assess his side as enormous favourites going into next weekend's second leg.
Socceroo left-back Mathew Leckie ended an A-League goalscoring drought of longer than 500 days in a timely fashion to seal City's fifth consecutive win over Western United - the last four of which came with a clean sheet - and it almost certainly put this tie beyond doubt.
It certainly wasn't helpful that star United striker Noah Botic had to start on the bench due to a minor injury concern and the 23-year-old, who has been linked with a move to join fellow Australian Jackson Irvine at Bundesliga club St Pauli, may need to replicate his elimination final hat-trick heroism to give his side any chance of pulling themselves out of the quicksand back at AAMI Park next weekend.
Melbourne Victory 0-1 Auckland FC
24 hours later at the same venue we had a fixture with a very different feel about it: Melbourne Victory held the possession 60-40 and racked up nine corners but couldn't force a single save out of Auckland FC goalkeeper Alex Paulsen, whilst the regular season champions converted one of their only two shots on target into an important one-goal lead.
Additional temporary seating is being added to Mount Smart Stadium this week to tip the capacity close to 30,000 and it has been sold before even being installed, with the full house sign being put up on Monday.
Victory head coach Arthur Diles has bravely predicted his players will "use (the atmosphere) to our advantage" and the 43-year-old, who was thrust into the job mid-season after Patrick Kisnorbo's shock resignation to take up an opportunity in Asia, has the immensely difficult task of working out how to get past an opposition that has conceded just 14 goals from 13 home games this season.
The visitors are on a three-game winning streak away from home (Wellington, Macarthur, Western Sydney) but conceded goals in all three victories so they may be required to put two or even three or more into the net to overturn the deficit and become the first A-League club to play in eight men's Grand Finals