That's for them to worry about now – the Sky Blues can look forward to another grand final, on Sunday night at Optus Stadium against Perth Glory. One more win will cap off Corica's rookie season as coach in the best possible fashion.

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"I'm excited, mate," Corica said. "I'm just very proud of the boys. I thought they were outstanding. It's about them, not me. I'm just there to point them in the right direction.

"They've been there before, they've got the experience, it's going to be no different. Going to Perth, we've been there before, we've beaten them over there before – this year."

Corica had no idea such a one-sided scoreline was in the offing, but he said he knew something special was brewing by the way his players were training upon their return from Tuesday night's AFC Champions League trip to South Korea.

"I did say at some stage we'd smash a team and it was tonight," he said. "Everything went our way ... defensively we were outstanding as well, especially in the first half. Once the goals started to come you could see everyone going forward wanting to score more goals."

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Ola Toivonen's injury-time consolation was the only blemish for the Sky Blues. "Redders [goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne] actually apologised to me afterwards, he said it was his fault. I said, 'I'll let you off this time'," Corica said.

For Melbourne Victory, it was a truly humiliating experience and their coach, Kevin Muscat, took full responsibility for what unfolded. He, too, did not think anything like this was in store.

"There was no alarm bells," Muscat said. "We had a very off night. Credit to Sydney, they played really well, they've earned the right to go to the grand final. Sport, sometimes this happens, where you have a really off night.

"I'll take responsibility for that, and we move on and start planning for next year. Everything will be dissected now, and I haven't got a problem with that. We prepared as we thought was best, and I'm not going to be looking back on any of that as an excuse.

"We're hurting. I apologise to our members and fans personally. Whichever way you want to look at it, we didn't perform."