It has been a big week for the Phoenix following the resignation of coach Ricki Herbert and then a mid-week loss to Newcastle, but they got their first victory under interim coach Chris Greenacre on Sunday beating the Heart 1-0 at Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin.
Then the Victory came out to AAMI Park desperate to bounce back from last week's 6-2 loss to the Central Coast Mariners, and hit back they did with a 5-0 hammering of a disappointing Newcastle Jets in front of 17,778 fans.
The Phoenix might still occupy last place on the A-League table, but now has 24 points following Sunday's win over the Heart to be just four points behind the sixth-place Brisbane Roar with three matches of their season remaining.
It also continued the Heart's poor form away from Melbourne and saw them concede sixth spot to the Roar this week as well. The Heart now sits in seventh spot to be a point behind Brisbane.
Wellington got the only goal of the game in Dunedin thanks to Jeremy Brockie in the 14th minute. It was Brockie's 14th goal of the season to have him just one behind Central Coast's league-leader Daniel McBreen.
Greenacre was understandably delighted with the Phoenix's performance and felt they fully deserved the three points for the amount of opportunities to score they created.
"The main focus this week has been on releasing the shackles. I told the players to enjoy playing, to go out and enjoy playing football again because we seemed to have lost that.
"I was hoping there would be a bit more of a spark today and there was. The message was to work hard and express ourselves. The Heart are a good side and we stood up to them."
Heart coach John Aloisi was left scratching his head as to why his team continues to struggle away from Melbourne. They now have a 16-game winless streak on the road.
"I was disappointed in the performance most of all. We didn’t threaten them enough. We found it hard to get into the game because Wellington pushed us from the start. Their front four caused us a lot of problems," Aloisi said.
"We're very good at home and we can beat anyone, but away from home it just seems we can't get a result."
Then at AAMI Park, the Victory sent a signal to the Western Sydney Wanderers and Mariners that they are still a treat to this season's A-League championship by thumping Newcastle 5-0.
The Victory completely dominated a lacklustre Jets outfit from the start with Marco Rojas scoring in the eighth and 66th minutes, Adrian Leijer in the 15th and Mark Milligan from penalties in the 30th and 57th.
Archie Thompson returned to the Victory side to help the side open up the goal scoring chances despite not getting on the score sheet himself as his team ended a run three straight losses.
Victory coach Ange Postecoglou was glad to see his team respond with such an emphatic performance.
"Obviously we were looking for a positive response to last week and a tough two or three weeks, and that's what football is about," Postecoglou said.
"You have to bounce back and we are a club who is designed to be challenging for things, and dealing with pressure.
"We have had a bit on us the last three weeks that we haven’t dealt well with, but this was a good reaction from the players right from the start. It was great to end up scoring a few goals."
The Jets went into the game without Emile Heskey, Michael Bridges, Zenon Caravella and Sam Gallaway, but stayed fifth despite the heavy loss.
Coach Gary van Egmond felt he had no choice but to leave some of those key players at home because of the gruelling current schedule. He still expected a better performances though.
"We didn’t completely and utterly follow the game plan. We knocked the ball around at times quite well, but when you play against the Victory if you don't organise yourself when you lose it they can really hurt you on the counter. That's obviously what happened," van Egmond said.
"If you look at our schedule we played Brisbane last Friday, we had Wellington last Wednesday and now we've played Sunday, and back up again on Friday. The likes of Bridgey and Emile wouldn’t be able to cope with that and we want them as fresh as possible for our next home game.
"Zenon is carrying a hammy and Sam Gallaway hasn’t pulled up as well as we'd like from the challenge against Wellington. To compound things a little bit more, James Virgili and James Brown went down sick in the hotel on Saturday so unfortunately we were a little short on troops.
"At the end of the day, there's no excuses and I still felt we had a team out there good enough to win this game, and it was very disappointing."