Canberra United make the trip to Victoria this weekend as they put their six-match unbeaten run on the line with a testing visit to second-placed Melbourne Victory on Sunday afternoon at the Home of the Matildas.
Having drawn 1-1 with the league leaders Melbourne City at McKellar Park in Round 17. It’s the turn of Jeff Hopkins’ Victory to take on a side that last tasted defeat in the Ninja A-League back in mid-January in the abandoned match against Sydney FC.
In fact, the last time Canberra was defeated having completed ninety minutes was pre-Christmas, ten fixtures ago, when Victory themselves came to the National Capital and walked away with the three points having claimed a comprehensive 2-0 success against Antoni Jagarinec’s team.
Since then, United’s form has been excellent, four wins and five draws to go alongside the curtailed Sky Blues contest. That’s kept United on the cusp of the finals places, only goal difference separating the team in green from Central Coast Mariners above them, and only three points away from fourth.
Victory will prove to be a real litmus test of any finals credentials though, a daunting trip for Canberra that has in the past only yielded three victories from fifteen attempts, and thirteen points from a possible thirty.
Indeed, you have to go all the way back to 28 December 2016 to find the last time Canberra was successful in an away match against the Victory, goals from Nickoletta Flannery and an 89th minute penalty from Ashleigh Sykes securing a rare success south of the border.
When United battered their Melbourne counterparts 5-1 at McKellar Park exactly a month later, few in attendance would have predicted that Canberra would not gain a win, and collect only five points, from the ten matches that would follow that memorable afternoon in Belconnen.
But that was then, and this is now. Six of the last seven goals scored by United have been netted by different players, including an own goal, a telling statistic when discussing the merits of Canberra as an attacking unit.
Disregarding the not compete Sydney FC fixture, Canberra have only conceded more than once in a game in one fixture in 2025, the addition of the Sky Blues match doesn’t demean that number significantly either.
Overall, this should be a close encounter with not much between the two teams. Having secured three successive 1-1 draws however, Canberra would love to come away with a maximum return and, in the process, dent Victory’s title tilt.
