A-League grand final LIVE: Central Coast Mariners v Melbourne Victory

Here’s how they’re lining up tonight.

The Mariners are, as anticipated, unchanged - the same 11 players who started in last week’s semi-final second leg against Sydney FC will start again.

And Victory have made two changes - Zinedine Machach is back from suspension and straight into midfield for Roly Bonevacia, while Salim Khelifi replaces Nishan Velupillay on the right wing.

Tonight’s match is sold out - it’s the first time that’s been the case for an A-League grand final since 2019, when 56,371 people packed into Optus Stadium to watch Sydney FC beat Perth Glory on penalties.

We will also probably get a new attendance record at Industree Group Stadium, too, with some temporary seating installed at the Brisbane Water end, right next to those iconic palm trees. It doesn’t look like they’ll be able to fit more than a few dozen fans in there, but that’ll be enough to crack the previous best mark of 20,060 - which is, as it happens, the capacity of this glorious venue.

Unfortunately the extra seats appear to have come at the expense of the even more iconic MasterFoods sauce bottles, which are sadly nowhere to be seen.

It is what it is.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of tonight’s A-League Men grand final between the Central Coast Mariners and Melbourne Victory.

I’m Vince Rugari, I’m here in Gosford, and I’m bloody excited. This place is absolutely pumping.

The Mariners are one win away from completing a simply remarkable domestic treble. Victory are one win away from ending their coach Tony Popovic’s miserable record in grand finals. We are not that far from finding out which of those things is going to happen. Kick-off is at 7.45pm.

Strap in - team news and a whole bunch of other stuff to come shortly.