{"id":675381,"date":"2026-05-16T20:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T20:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/675381\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T20:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T20:35:10","slug":"melbourne-city-wins-a-league-womens-championship-as-matildas-star-holly-mcnamara-shines-against-wellington-phoenix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/675381\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne City wins A-League Women’s championship as Matildas star Holly McNamara shines against Wellington Phoenix"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Holly McNamara masterclass has delivered Melbourne City a 3-1 grand final win over Wellington and with it, a record-equalling fifth A-League Women championship.<\/p>\n

Matildas striker and league golden boot winner McNamara, 23, opened the scoring with a world-class long-range strike from the corner of the box in the 41st minute and added a second in the 43rd at AAMI Park on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Fellow Matildas youngster Leticia McKenna scored a terrific long-range goal in the 49th minute before Phoenix striker Makala Woods scored in the 52nd.<\/p>\n

With her heroics, McNamara delivered City a premiership-championship double in front of 7,174 fans and their first grand final win since the 2019-20 season, while denying Bev Priestman’s Phoenix their first title.<\/p>\n

Michael Matricciani’s City draw level with Sydney FC on five championships and 10 ALW trophies overall.<\/p>\n

City can yet claim a treble if they triumph in the Women’s Asian Champions League and depart for Suwon, South Korea on Sunday ahead of Wednesday’s semifinal against Japanese club Tokyo Verdy Beleza.<\/p>\n

City should have scored in the fifth minute when Aideen Keane brilliantly slipped through Bryleeh Henry.<\/p>\n

Do you have a story idea about women in sport?<\/p>\n

Email us abcsport5050@your.abc.net.au<\/a><\/p>\n

The winger could have shot first time but attempted to round Phoenix goalkeeper Victoria Esson and went to ground.<\/p>\n

The incident was cleared by VAR \u2014 which was making its ALW debut.<\/p>\n

On the half-hour mark, McKenna curled a dangerous free kick onto the bar.<\/p>\n

McNamara had a goal disallowed for offside in the 38th minute but struck three minutes later.<\/p>\n

Danielle Turner curled a super ball towards McNamara and the striker worked the ball to Keane, then received it back and beat Esson with a sensational curling strike.<\/p>\n

Two minutes later, Shelby McMahon brilliantly released McNamara down the right and the City striker burst into the box and fired home her second goal.<\/p>\n

McKenna snagged City’s third when she was given too much space on the edge of the box and curled the ball off the post into the top corner.<\/p>\n

Wellington snatched a goal back when Emma Pijnenburg whipped a ball into the box and Mackenzie Anthony forced a save from Malena \u00a0Mieres, but Woods tapped home the rebound.<\/p>\n

From there, Mieres denied the Phoenix multiple times to preserve City’s lead.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Holly McNamara masterclass has delivered Melbourne City a 3-1 grand final win over Wellington and with it,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[325581,23655,52965,175115,64,63,299907,596,177793,293059,44964,282044,325582,13198,85],"class_list":["post-675381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-a-league-championship","tag-a-league-women","tag-aami-park","tag-alw","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-city-win","tag-football","tag-holly-mcnamara","tag-leticia-mckenna","tag-matildas","tag-melbourne-city","tag-melbourne-city-vs-wellington-phoenix","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}