The big winners of the final round are...
Melbourne City, who finished one point ahead of Western United with their classy 5-1 demolition of Sydney FC at the weekend.
But the reward is far greater than the gap between the two sides in the table: not only have Aurelio Vidmar's men picked up a free pass to the semi-finals later this month, to take place against the higher ranked of the two elimination final winners, but as the highest finishing Australian club they've earned themselves direct qualification to the league phase of the next AFC Champions League Elite.
That in itself will be worth, based on prize money for this current edition, a cool US$800,000 just for participating in the league phase let alone a seven-digit figure for getting into the Round of 16 and beyond, so little wonder that City came out of the blocks like a voter racing to get to the nearest polling station by 6pm.
Vidmar hailed a "perfect mentality" and said the team "got what we deserved" for their efforts throughout a challenging season, whilst also jovially joking that he may hear from good friend Carl Veart, the boss of Adelaide United who scraped through despite winning only one of their last 11 matches of the season.
The big losers of the final round are...
Well, it's no surprises that the seven teams to have dropped out of contention all feature in this segment to some extent, but especially Sydney FC who seemed to have sixth spot (if not better) in the bag before their deep run into the current second-tier AFC Champions League 2 campaign took the wind out of their sails.
The club is in a "transition" according to manager Ufuk Talay who has been forced to blood some young talent in the back end of the season following a couple of sales, whilst they made no secret of their ambitions to shelve their A-League ambitions to chase significant Champions League 2 money. In the end, it worked out for nought on both fronts.
Talay repudiated recent reports that he had re-committed to the role for a further two seasons, saying that his future is "not 100% confirmed" and is subject to an end-of-season review with his superiors.
Golden Boot race heading into the finals
Patryk Klimala and Noah Botic made single goal moves up the standings but only the latter has any chance of progressing any further, with Western Sydney Wanderers' Nicolas Milanovic joining Botic as the joint-frontrunner to win this season's Golden Boot award.
Adrian Segecic may have made his last A-League appearance after Talay also told reporters that the attacking midfielder will "definitely" be in the market for overseas opportunities.
Goal of the Week: Round 29
It's hard to go past the ball control, composure and vision shown by A-League veteran Adam Taggart during one of his two goals for Perth Glory in their last game of the season.
So what's next?
The first week of the finals series will see Western United host Adelaide United on Friday night and Melbourne Victory travel to Western Sydney Wanderers on Saturday night in single-leg eliminators. The semi-finals involving Auckland FC, Melbourne City and the winners of those two elimination finals will be double-leggers.