Melbourne Victory head coach Jeff Hopkins revelled in an “amazing” season after winning the Westfield W-League Grand Final on Sunday.
Kyra Cooney-Cross curled in a 120th-minute corner to earn Victory its second championship and first since 2013/14 with a 1-0 win over Sydney FC.
Hopkins was delighted after an encounter which saw Victory squander numerous chances before sealing its win.
“I love working with this team, it’s been amazing this year, hopefully we’ll keep most of the squad,” he told Fox Sports.
“I don’t know what Lisa (De Vanna’s) thinking now, I might go have a word with her tonight while she’s on a high and get her to sign a contract.
“They’ve been fantastic to work with, great work ethic, they turn up, they get on well with each other and it makes my job and the job of this staff very easy.”
Sydney goalkeeper Jada Whyman was named the player of the match after making several saves.
Hopkins praised his team for continuing to push despite squandering multiple opportunities.
“After half-time I think we kind of got a little bit more self-belief, we started to create a few more chances and we started to dominate possession I thought,” he said.
“At one stage, we’d missed about three or four on the spin and Lisa just came over to the side and she was just laughing and it’s not going in today and I just had to stand up and laugh with her.
“I thought we played really well, we went forward and we created them a lot of problems, we were still very, very wary of the way that they could break and the way they could counter-attack on us so that was really the only thing I said to them was just make sure we lock the back door and we don’t let them back in and just keep doing what you’re doing and to score that late was amazing.
“I thought we’d got our five penalty takers and one or two didn’t want to take them either so I didn’t even see the goal or who even scored it.”
