Olympic, third on 17 points, take on leaders Edgeworth (27 points) at Darling Street Oval on Sunday in round 11.

A gritty 1-0 away win over Maitland last week put Olympic three points clear of Azzurri, Weston and Lambton Jaffas in the race for the Northern NSW NPL top five. The top eight remain in the mix for the play-offs with three games each to play.

The victory continued a turnaround for the club, who missed the finals under Peter McGuinness the past two years. Alex Tagaroulias stepped in as interim coach when McGuinness exited on this season's eve. Joel Griffiths takes over in 2021.

Hodges believed McGuinness deserved credit for bringing through young talent like Jared Muller and Jakob Cresnar, who were thriving this season. He said the turnaround also started under McGuinness.

"The last few years we really worked on our structure, the technical side of things, the type of football we wanted to play," Hodges said. "Towards the end of last year with Pete, we worked on getting that competitiveness back because a lot of those younger boys had come out of youth systems at the Jets or Mariners, where it wasn't solely focused on winning. It was more about developing yourself as a player.

"Local league, it's still about development but the main focus is winning for your club and supporters. We haven't been playing the prettiest football but it's been successful the last few games. And I'd rather win playing ugly than play pretty and lose.

"It's been a couple of years in the making and a few of the younger boys have really stepped up. They are starting to mature and I think that's been a massive difference."

He said a "back to basics" approach had helped Olympic win more tight games.

"We were probably overplaying things a little bit and shooting ourselves in the foot by giving teams goals, whereas now we've really focused on just locking up our defence and letting the attackers do their thing" he said. "It's worked well."

He said the addition of Dino Fajkovic, Anthony Marenghi and goalkeeper Nate Cavaliere had also been a key to their success. Fajkovic returns from illness on Sunday but Reece Papas, Tom Curran and Blake Green were out injured.

Edgeworth can secure a record 13th top-division premiership with a win if Broadmeadow (22 points) lose at Lake Macquarie (4) on Saturday. Also Saturday, Weston host Jaffas in a match crucial to the top-five race. On Sunday, Maitland (13) need a win at Adamstown (4) to revive their hopes. Azzurri and Valentine have the bye.