MELBOURNE, Australia -- "We'll just have to play them in the final," came a voice, half-jokingly.
It was the immediate aftermath of South Melbourne's win over Adelaide United in the round of 32 of the Australia Cup; victorious Hellas types gathered around a flatscreen in the dressing room at Lakeside Stadium to watch the draw for the rounds to come. Each new name plucked from the chamber induced a murmur, excitement rising over a possible meeting with Preston Lions in the quarterfinals.
But as the completed bracket appeared, there was a slight, disappointed exhale, too. Melbourne Victory, the dream match-up, was on the other side of the field.
And yet, against the odds, it's come to pass. One of the biggest games in Australia's domestic football history will take place this Saturday at what looks set to be a sold-out AAMI Park, as Victory and South Melbourne face off in the final of the Australia Cup.
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Perhaps the footballing gods, 12 years into the Cup's history and 21 years after the genesis of this previously unrealised rivalry, examined the landscape and decided the time was right for the meeting to finally occur. Certainly, South fans may have perhaps felt as if there was some divine inspiration pushing them onwards over the past few months, with Siniša Cohadzić's unit having trailed in all four of their games on their road to the final, only to rally back.
It's a heavyweight bout, a fixture wherein promoters hardly need to do anything because it arrives full of the kind of symbolism, history, emotion, aspiration, and ties that wouldn't seem out of place in a Hollywood blockbuster.
These are two titans, inextricably linked to the story of the game Down Under. And while plenty link them -- legendary names like Ange Postecoglou, Kevin Muscat, Paul Trimboli, Lisa De Vanna represented both -- the two clubs also exist as symbols of a broader, philosophical divide; their blood as blue as the kits they wear, one a four-time champion of Australia as a giant of the A-League Men, and the other exiled after serving as a four-time champion and preeminent power in the NSL.
For two decades, Victory has been at the vanguard of Australian football; they are the benchmark against which others are judged and, when the domestic game was at its peak of mainstream interest, they were leading the way. They were designed to be that, built from the ground up to embody the newly launched A-League in 2005 and taking full advantage of the top-flight monopoly they were granted over Melbourne to build a fanbase, legacy of success, and aura that only their Big Blue foes, Sydney FC -- who benefited from similar exclusivity in the Harbour City -- could challenge.
Such was the success that Victory had in establishing themselves, one can argue that subsequent expansions into Melbourne, Melbourne Heart/City and then Western United, have operated with an anchor around their necks when it comes to establishing their own fanbase and identity.
South Melbourne, meanwhile, have existed outside that bubble.
Banished from the top-flight with the death of the NSL, they have spent the past two decades in the Victorian state leagues. Denied access to the exposure, revenue streams, or opportunities exclusively apportioned to the A-League, their ambitions and grievances over their exclusion never faded, but for the early years of their exile, merely surviving was a victory, discarded as they and the rest of "Old Soccer" were in the era of "New Football."
They watched on as Heart and Western United were brought into the league, and watched on as the latter -- preferred over South's own expansion bid in 2018 -- collapsed. Now, though, South Melbourne are as back as they've ever been. A driving force behind the introduction of the national second-tier Australian Championship, a founding member of the OFC Pro League, and pushing for admittance to the A-League once more.
On Saturday, they have an opportunity to win their first top-tier national trophy (they won the inaugural Australia Championship last year) since Micky Petersen led them to the 2000-01 NSL premiership.
Part of Saturday's appeal, thus, is that it is a fixture that not all that long ago wasn't just impossible, but expressly intended to be that way by the powers that be, creating a rivalry that, to now, didn't need on-field meetings to sustain it. The fall of South Melbourne and the rise of Melbourne Victory came at a time when Australian football had, by design, ring-fenced the A-League from the rest of the footballing pyramid, playing in a league without promotion and relegation, at a different time of year, and the entire system designed in a way to ensure its best and brightest flowed upwards with very little going the other way.
To try and pretend Victory and their supporters haven't built something very real and very special in the past two decades is to deny reality, but it's also inescapable that this came at a time when clubs like South were expressly denied similar opportunities as a matter of policy.
No wonder then, that when the Australia Cup first launched in 2014, then under the name FFA Cup, the chance of a competitive meeting between the likes of Victory and South helped underpin the entire concept. And while it has taken over a decade for us to finally get to this point, overarching circumstances, as well as the delayed gratification, mean that it's probably going to be far bigger now than it would have been had we got it in that first iteration.
How big is it, this first-ever staging of the Mel Clásico? By virtue of packing out AAMI Park, we can already declare it to be the biggest final in the history of the Cup, blowing past the previous record crowd of 18,751 that watched Melbourne City beat Sydney in 2016.
Where does it sit overall in the game's history? You can't truly answer that question until it's been played, because the ramifications of a South Melbourne win would reverberate far further than a comfortable Victory triumph. But even without the benefit of hindsight, that examining it through the prism of other fixtures held up in the pantheon of Aussie "sokkah" can be done sanguinely, without dipping into the realm of gross hyperbole, speaks to its scale.
It's somewhat ironic, really, that the fault lines that have divided the game for so long are the very same things giving Saturday's showdown such broad appeal. But that, perhaps, speaks to the long-term opportunity that the game presents, too.
Saturday's final comes at a time when the A-League is grappling for emotional resonance, trying to get fans back in the stands and in front of their televisions by fostering connection and investment in its direction. It comes at a time when the gap between the A-League and the numerous NPLs below it is the smallest it's ever been, largely thanks to the austerity that has gripped the former since COVID.
It comes a week out from the second season of an Australian Championship still trying to establish a foothold, and where any pressure on Football Australia to lay out a roadmap for growth is much-needed. It comes at a time when South Melbourne are once again pushing for entry into the A-League, having pretty much ticked every on-field box to justify it.
That this game has captured so many imaginations, perhaps more than anything, offers a sign of what's possible if the Australian game found a way to tear down its silos. Of a future where the game's history intertwines with its future and natural rivalries bloom. Where the game's history is made where it should be -- on the pitch, rather than off it.