Melbourne Victory clinch A-League premiership

There are no reviewed versions of this page, so it may not have been checked for adherence to standards.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Melbourne Victory has won the 2006-07 A-League football (soccer) premiership after defeating New Zealand Knights 4-0 at Olympic Park, Melbourne.

The win takes Melbourne to 41 points, 13 ahead of Sydney FC in second place, with only four games remaining in the regular season. This makes it mathematically impossible for the Victory to be caught.

The regular season consists of 21 home-and-away rounds, with each team playing each other team three times. Each match sees the winning team awarded three competition points, or in the case of a draw, the teams receive one point each. The club at the top of the ladder - with the most points - is crowned A-League premiers, whilst the winner of the Grand Final is crownded champions.

Melbourne Victory have also led the competition in crowd numbers during the 2006-07 season, with an average attendance of 26,512 at the end of Round 17 - 10,698 more than the next-highest, Queensland Roar. The Victory's attendance of 50,333 at Telstra Dome when they played Sydney FC on December 10, 2006 set a new national record for a domestic football (soccer) match in Australia.

Victory's premiership also gives them a spot in the AFC Champions League, the premier club tournament for Asian Football Confederation countries. Football Federation Australia become a member of the AFC in January 2006, after moving from the Oceania Football Confederation on January 1, 2006.

Melbourne have been the runaway leaders of the 2006-07 competition, a huge improvement on the seventh-placed finish that they achieved during the 2005-06 season. Their striking combination of Danny Allsopp, "Socceroo" Archive Thompson and Brazilian Fred has yielded more goals than any other this campaign.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Sources

"Melbourne Victory storms home" — Sydney Morning Herald, December 17, 2006
Bren O'Brien. "Victory secure top spot" — Sportal, December 17, 2006
"Victory hammer Knights to take minor premiership" — ABC, December 17, 2006
Bren O'Brien. "Record crowd, honours shared" — A-League, December 8, 2006
"Grand Final Rematch to Open HAL Season" — A-League, May 1, 2006

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.