The final act of this weekend’s football frenzy at The Home of The Matildas sees South Melbourne and Heidelberg United face off in a hotly anticipated Nike FC Cup Final.
The two previous champions of NPLW Victoria will go head-to-head, as South seek to upset the Heidelberg juggernaut of season 2025.
Dennis Georgakopoulos’ Heidelberg have been the team to beat this campaign, as they head into Sunday’s final on the cusp of sealing the NPLW Premiership.
Losing just two out of 22 competitive matches across league and cup, the Bergers have thus far backed up their Championship from last season in superb fashion.
Led by top-scorer Sawa Matsuda, Heidelberg have looked close to unstoppable at times, not only avoiding defeats but winning almost every game they play.
The team from Olympic Village have won 15 of their last 17 matches across all competitions, a run ominously similar to the form they showed last campaign which carried them all the way to the NPLW Championship.
This time around, the Bergers are hoping to add a second ever Nike Cup to their trophy cabinet, having first won the competition in 2016.
Much has changed since that first triumph almost a decade ago, with club legend Steph Galea the only player still playing for Heidelberg from that 2016 team.
These days, Galea faces stiff competition for playing time in a team stacked with talent.
Heidelberg’s midfield is anchored by Asuka Miyata, enabling a fearsome set of attack-minded players including Caitlin Karic, Tamar Levin, Sarah O’Donoghue and Matsuda to wreak havoc for opposition midfields and defences.
Combined with a solid and consistent backline, Georgakopoulos’ team have posed a challenge few have been able to solve in 2025.
However, despite being near-perfect this season, the Bergers will be all too aware of the quality of Sunday’s opponents.
South are one of just two teams to have cracked the Heidelberg code this season, stunning the defending champions 5-1 at Olympic Village early in the campaign in what was the highlight of a blistering first six weeks for Hellas.
Much has changed at the Lakeside club since then, including at the Head Coach position, where Justin Micallef has stepped in to steady the ship and revive the team’s ambitions.
Beginning the season as a free-scoring team, with Nikki Furukawa in particular proving to be a goal-scoring machine, South have since adopted a much more controlled and low-scoring game style.
A difficult past month received a much-needed injection of positivity on Sunday, when a last-minute Alana Burn winner sealed a vital three points against Preston Lions, keeping South’s finals hopes alive.
Most of the players who featured in the win against Heidelberg earlier in the season are still regular features for South, including Furukawa, Burn, Meisha Westland, Raquel Deralas and captain Francesca Iermano.
Possessing the quality that they do with the track record that they have, one would be foolish to rule out a South upset this weekend.
Adding fuel to the fire for Micallef’s team is the fact that South have never won the Nike FC Cup, a rare gap in the club’s cabinet of Victorian football trophies.
With a win each from their previous meetings this campaign, Sunday’s Cup Final is finely poised and could well prove to be an epic encounter between these historic clubs.