After winning Capital Football's National Premier League grand final, Canberra Olympic coach Frank Cachia sent a message telling his players to report for training the next week.
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It wasn't a crazed effort to begin preparations for a three-peat tilt – Olympic's season isn't over with a game in Brisbane on Saturday night.
Not only are Olympic in the final eight of the FFA Cup, their league championship title has Capital Football's treble winners in the National Premier Leagues finals series.
Olympic play the Brisbane Strikers in a knockout tournament pitting the eight league champions (first-placed finishers) from around the country against each other.
It means Olympic's players have no time to rest with a looming FFA Cup match at home against Green Gully on September 27.
"It's been like that for a little while," Cachia said.
"Even last year we were walking a bit of a tightrope to make the finals and once we made it every game was sudden death.
"Then coming into this season we had pretty big ambitions so every game was important. [Over the] last couple of months especially there was enormous reward associated with every victory that we got and we've been managing to get through."
Speaking after Olympic's FFA Cup Round of 16 win, Cachia said his side "want to be known as the best Olympic side" in the club's 60-year history.
It is a piece of history that everyone wants to be a part of. Olympic players that won't take the field against Brisbane are still making the trip up north.
"This underlines the culture that we've established in the group," Cachia said.
"The boys that aren't in the squad that could make the trip, we've wanted them to come.
"So all the boys have chipped in to make sure that these guys can come, and the club's come on board in making sure we've got as many of our playing squad going up even if some won't be used on the evening."
Cachia says that by the end of the season Olympic will have played in "around 30 competitive games" and the length of the season could prove problematic in the coming weeks.
It's not long until sports grounds across the ACT are closed to be rejuvenated ahead of the cricket season – the goal posts will be gone as well, meaning Olympic "will need to find somewhere else to train".
A date with the Brisbane Strikers, who hosted Tim Cahill's Melbourne City in the FFA Cup, will be Olympic's third with a Queensland-based club this season.
"We probably go into this knowing little bits and pieces, probably more than if we were playing a team from outside of Queensland," Cachia said.
Tickets for Canberra Olympic's next FFA Cup match can be bought from the Hellenic Club in Woden, CISAC Belconnen, Fillos Braddon or Capital Football.
NATIONAL PREMIER LEAGUES
Saturday: Finals Series – Canberra Olympic v Brisbane Strikers at Perry Park (Brisbane), 6pm. Watch the live stream at www.nationalpremierleagues.com.au
