It has taken seven months, 30 odd meetings and some ill-tempered and highly public arguments. But it finally looks as though soccer bosses and the players union are inching towards a deal that would resolve the long-running pay and conditions row and head off any prospect of strike action ahead of the A-League kick-off next month.

FFA chiefs were on Thursday meeting with A-League club owners - the most important constituency in the three pronged battle over a new Collective Bargaining Agreement - to put to them a series of proposals hammered out between the union (the PFA) and the game's governing body in Sydney on Wednesday.

The Matildas had been paid a maximum of $21,000 a year per player under the old CBA. Credit:Getty Images

Having spent much of the past two months attacking each other in public, the FFA, run by chief executive David Gallop, and the PFA, headed up by Adam Vivian, have said little publicly about the outcome of the latest talks which has given rise to hopes of a settlement.

Conspiracy theorists might point to this fact alone as suggesting agreement is close.