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Amidst all the flailing limbs and screaming faces, perhaps the player whose reaction captured the moment best was Princess Ibini. The Sydney FC stand-in captain, wearing her bright yellow substitute's bib, tore out across the grass of Melbourne Rectangular Stadium as the full-time whistle still hung in the chill air. Her arms were stretched as wide as her grin, as though she could wrap them around the whole world, and she ran with the kind of weightlessness of someone who has just had something impossibly heavy lifted from their shoulders. The 2023-24 A-League Women season has not been a successful one by any traditional metric or measure for Ibini. She scored just one goal in the past 24 games, compared with eight in 21 the previous year, as well as four assists compared with five. Not through lack of trying, mind you: of the many opportunities she tried to create — the ones that, in seasons past, would come to her as easily and naturally as breathing — the ball simply didn't want to go where she wanted it to. Princess Ibini was hounded by Melbourne City defenders during the grand final.(Getty Images: Robert Cianflone) It would spin off her foot the wrong way, clang into the shin of an opponent instead of skipping past them, roll just too far or too quickly away from her as she forlornly chased it down. Nothing seemed to be going the way she wanted it to this season. The captaincy was unexpectedly thrust upon her after Sydney's regular captain, Natalie Tobin, tore her ACL in the opening game. As the next most experienced player in the side, at just 23 years old, having been at this club for almost a decade, the task of leading them was suddenly, perhaps prematurely, hers. The team she led then struggled in the early rounds of their league campaign as they tried to re-invent themselves following the departures of key players, including almost their entire starting midfield, in the off-season. The performances that followed waxed and waned in consistency through a mixture of injuries, an untimely trip to Uzbekistan in November to take part in the AFC Women's Club Championship, and an Under-20s Women's Asian Cup in March, which sucked the young core out of Sydney's side. And yet, they persevered, struggling through games they'd otherwise breeze past, squeezing through with single-goal wins or draws, somehow getting so close to the premiership that it was waiting for them underneath Leichhardt Stadium on the final day of the season, only for them to lose their last game and allow City to sneak in from behind to lift the trophy instead. This bad luck seemed to weigh heavier and heavier on Ibini's shoulders with every passing game; so much so that, in the second leg of the semifinal against the Central Coast Mariners last weekend, her shoulder popped out of its socket entirely. And who could blame it, when it had been carrying so much? Such has been Sydney FC's 2023-24 season: a series of unfortunate events the likes of which the club has never experienced before, coming at them from all angles and avenues, testing their resilience and resolve. It was the same story during this season's grand final against Melbourne City on Saturday afternoon. Ibini started the game, as she has started every game for the Sky Blues this season, but the hour she spent on the pitch played out in much the same way as all her others. By the time she left, her midnight-blue jersey soaked with sweat, it was clear that something had happened out there. It just wasn't football. Not really. It was something closer to suffering. Against a slick, machine-like City side, which ended the game with almost 80 per cent of possession, twice as many shots, and three times as many passes, all that Sydney could do was put their heads down and weather the storm. And Ibini was caught in its eye, spinning and twisting and tumbling and falling, watching the steel-blue shirts of the league's premiers slice and slide around her, led by the dazzling 17-year-old Daniela Galic with feet as quick as a flick-knife and an eye just as sharp. In the rare moments in which the ball appeared at Ibini's feet, more by accident than by design — as if the universe was trying to pay her back for a season's worth of bad luck — she was barely able to spot a teammate before City swarmed and stole it back again. Sydney didn't play football. City made it almost impossible for them to do so. But sometimes, that's not what a game needs. That's not what a championship requires. Sometimes, as it did on Saturday, it requires something else; something which isn't as easy to teach as pressing triggers or overloads or one-touch passes. It requires grit. It requires stubbornness and sacrifice. It requires trust. It requires knowing what suffering already feels like and not wincing away. All they needed was one moment, and for 69 freezing minutes, Sydney FC did everything else they could think of to try and grind one out for themselves. Charlotte Mclean and Jordan Thompson, the make-shift centre-back pairing who had been responsible for conceding the fewest goals all season, threw themselves at every pass and player who came near them. It wasn't graceful defending by any means, but it was necessary defending, flinging shins and hips and heads towards the rubber, crashing again and again up against the blue wave of City's attacking line. Jada Whyman, the team's totemic goalkeeper, flew and flapped around the six-yard area as cross after cross was lasered in, clawing and slapping the ball as far away as she could, scrambling and stumbling onto every leaky ball. Shay Hollman and Margaux Chauvet, the two teenage midfielders, thrust up into starting spots in the absence of more senior players, ran themselves into the ground and pulled City's players down with them, sticking out legs and tugging at shirts, doing whatever they could to disrupt and disorganise. Abbey Lemon and Tori Tumeth, Sydney's two fullbacks, facing some of the best attackers in the league, stretched and slid and scuffed their way through the game, thumping balls into the stands or somewhere vaguely up-field, tangling and tumbling into the grass as they wedged their bodies in the spaces between boot and ball. Cortnee Vine, the league's star player, their World Cup hero, trying and failing to sneak past the watchful eyes of City's Julia Grosso, spending most of her time backtracking to help her teammates defend, forming another brick in their dark blue wall. Mackenzie Hawkesby, the team's other leader, their midfield general, covering every green blade and white lick of paint, running and running and running and running even when she didn't know what it would lead to, or especially when she didn't know what it would lead to. And then there was Ibini, doing what she had done all season, her body bending and breaking, her hamstring tweaking, her shirt soaked, her legs bruised, her stats forgettable, her tired legs carrying her off the field in the 67th minute uncertain that everything she gave would be worth something in the end. But that's where the faith comes in. That's where the trust comes in. That's where Indiana Dos Santos, the 16-year-old winger, came in, picking up the ball near halfway and spotting what might have been her team's only moment of glory winking in the space between City's centre-backs. It was a Hail Mary pass, done with the teenager's weaker foot, and statistically one of the least likely things to work after 69 minutes of chasing shadows, but sometimes those are what this game calls for; those are the only things you have left to try. Where Melbourne City's grand final was all fiddly finesse, Sydney FC's grand final was a hit-and-hope. It was fitting, in a way, that the deciding goal was scored by Ibini's replacement, Shea Connors: a player who hadn't scored a single goal all season, having missed several games through injuries of her own, who had the team's equal-highest "big chances missed" statistic (alongside Ibini), who hadn't even touched the ball by the time Dos Santos arrowed her pass into the grass ahead. Ibini, with ice strapped to her hamstring, watched from the bench as Connors angled her run off the shoulder so neatly, and timed her gazelle-like steps so perfectly, that with her first touch of the game was able to slide the ball beneath Melissa Barbieri's arm and into the back of the net. The captain was the first to launch herself up off the seats and leap into the air, hamstring be damned; she was the first to sprint out across the grass when the full-time whistle sounded 30 minutes later, their record fifth championship title secured; she was the first to feel the weight of this season of suffering dissolve in the air and to finally realise that all the pain she's been through was worth it. "It's been a rollercoaster of a ride," she said afterwards. "But I wouldn't want to be on this rollercoaster with anyone else. "No one expected us to be here. No one wanted us to be here. But we did it." Sydney FC can now lay claim to being the greatest women's club in Australian top-flight history. Their ten trophies, five premierships and five championships, is more than any other team has won either in the A-League Women, or in its predecessor, the Women's National Soccer League. Some of those trophies have been easy. Others, especially this one, have been hard. But it's the way that they've navigated it all — the way they've created and maintained this dynasty, through all the aches and pains of a growing league and a growing game — that is, perhaps, the most remarkable part. They've had to do it all while struggling for relevance and respect, fighting for support and visibility, stitching together part-time players and coaches to create some sense of continuity and consistency, trying to build something sturdy and lasting on brittle or broken foundations. Now, 16 years on from their first season in 2008, here they are, boasting some of the league's biggest crowds, its biggest names, and its biggest records. And this game, this season, this trophy, maybe more than any other, has shown the virtue of all that suffering. Sydney FC's championship win was not about the football. Not really. It was about the hope and heart that has made this club, this league, and this game, what it has become. "It's not just about how good you are on the field," player of the match Mackenzie Hawkesby said. "Technically, you can be the greatest player, but if you don't have the mentality and the heart, you're not going to win trophies, you're not going to get to grand finals, you're not going to win championships. "The core of us who've been here for a long time show that every day, and the players we bring in show that too. "When you face adversity, I think you have to rise to the occasion. When your back's against the wall, you just have to stand up. "Even though we weren't dominating like we were the last few seasons, we still had that heart." Sports content to make you think... or allow you not to. A newsletter delivered each Saturday.