And suddenly, like a rush of cold wind before a storm, there she was; blowing past Melbourne City's brittle defensive line, her navy blue jersey whipping purposefully at her back, her stride lengthening as she thundered towards goal.

Melina Ayres had barely been on the pitch four minutes before she was barrelling towards Sally James, City's young and flustered goalkeeper, who defiantly dug her studs into the grass and held her arms wide in preparation for the oncoming blast.

But it never came.

At least, not yet.

Having latched onto the route-one pass that sailed over the entire field, Ayres looked up and realised she was galloping into an empty penalty box, with only James to beat.

She had time to think about her next move as City's defenders closed in around her like a fog. But time is a luxury in football, and Ayres hadn't had much of it this season. She laced her volley wide.

That should have been the first warning; the first ominous rumble of something approaching in the distance.

The second came 10 minutes later. Ayres dropped deep to receive the ball down the right wing before turning and cutting in-field as her Victory teammates whirled around her. Eight City players stood between her and the goal, but through the wall of sky-blue mist, Ayres spotted Alex Chidiac making a slicing run into the box.

In a flash, the Victory forward fizzed a pass right through them all, its angle and speed carrying the ball right into Chidiac's feet. The midfielder swivelled and opened her hips, but James came tumbling out of goal and smothered Chidiac's shot.

There was something different about Victory in Sunday's preliminary final, something new, yet something old at the same time. It was as if, walking out onto the field at AAMI Park, they had remembered the team they were supposed to be this season before a series of calamities — injuries, COVID outbreaks, seven games in 21 days — almost buffeted them off course.

Few, except perhaps the players themselves, expected them to get as far as last week's elimination semi-final against Adelaide. Fewer still thought they'd come away from that game with a win — a gritty, desperate win — but a win all the same.

Finally, as Sunday's match ticked into the 30th minute, the distant rumbles arrived. Ayres rained down on a nervous Emma Checker, forcing the City veteran into a panicked pass that the Victory striker intercepted. Ayres then streamed into the penalty area, and at the tightest angle of all her chances so far, slid the ball beneath a shell-shocked James.

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Looking back, you have to wonder whether City didn't see this coming on the radar. Victory's 2-1 win over an in-form Reds side last week had some of the shapes and shades of this performance: the pockets of midfield pressure, the electric counter-attacks in wide channels, the passing sequences that were sometimes as clear and sharp as lightning.

That game was where Ayres rediscovered her spark. In her first start for Victory since returning from a season-long hamstring injury, the unsuspecting 22-year-old took her time warming to the first half.

But when she started and finished the match-winning move in the second, coolly volleying home a cross from Lia Privitelli, you wondered what the team's season could have looked like had she been there from the beginning.

If that Adelaide win was the forecast, then this preliminary final was the arrival — not just of Ayres, but of the Victory team that was meant to take this season by storm, following up last season's breathtaking championship win with another trophy or two.

It was Victory's most complete and most dominant performance since their 5-1 thumping of Adelaide in round one. Privitelli prodded and probed City's wide defenders and created deadly chances with pin-point crosses. 

Catherine Zimmerman, having spent much of this season isolated as Victory's sole striker, was freed up by Ayres's inclusion to find and create combinations with others that she otherwise might not have done. 

Chidiac, the inexhaustible heartbeat of this side, covered an ocean of space from the opening to the closing whistle. Fullbacks Polly Doran and Courtney Nevin were rarely turned around, while defensive midfielder Amy Jackson kept the pendulum swinging.

Indeed, Victory could have been 3-0 up by the time Ayres slid that ball beneath James for the opener. Again and again, in dark blue waves, Victory flooded forward. Privitelli called offside, Zimmerman scuppering an easy shot wide. Their second goal came through a simple corner, Nevin sailing a ball to Claudia Bunge at the back post as City's defenders dissolved around her.

The second half was much like the first. The tide pulling one way. Victory's third came barely 10 minutes in as its front four of Chidiac, Zimmerman, Ayres, and Privitelli combined in a tenacious, chaotic, joyful goal that seemed to capture everything this team has become over the course of its weary season.

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City's players, for their part, drifted further away from themselves as the game tumbled on. Aside from two 10-minute periods that book-ended the match — Rebekah Stott sizzled a shot just wide in the seventh minute, Tori Tumeth headed home a consolation in the 80th — the sky blue side simply ran out of steam.

Like Ayres, Victory has the wind in its sails at exactly the moment it needs it.

It may have taken the longer and more turbulent route to reach next weekend's grand final against Sydney FC, but perhaps by virtue of the past four months, the team will enter the biggest game of all weathered, hardened, prepared for anything.

And it will need to be against one of the best Sydney FC teams in several years — a team that scored the most and conceded the fewest throughout the season, a team with newly capped Matildas, a team with an almost otherworldly understanding of each other on and off the park.

The newly crowned Premiers will be favourites to do the double for the first time since 2009, to exact revenge for Victory's dramatic 1-0 championship win over them last season.

But while they come into their final match as the underdogs, Victory's past two weeks — indeed, their entire past four months — remind us that just when we think they've taken their last breath, they find a way to come back up for air.