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The Western Sydney Wanderers may well become the first team since their big brothers in season one to win the championship in their first campaign.
They would stand alone as the first team to ever do the double at the first time of asking.
But, did anyone ever think that immediately winning the title might be the worst thing that could happen to the fledgling club?
Perhaps that’s an absurd statement on face value, but let me explain.
In 2008 the Newcastle Jets were on top of the A-League world. They’d just beaten the premiers and their arch-rivals Central Coast in the grand final to claim their first championship, and were headed to the Asian Champions League.
Their next season, however, proved to be an utter disaster. Proven starters Mark Bridge, Andrew Durante, Stu Musialik and Troy Hearfield all departed to be replaced by a collective bereft of talent.
The team’s stock plummeted as they completed the astonishing feat of going from first to worst, picking up the wooden spoon in the 2008-09 season.
To add to this, crowds dropped by a staggering 4,000 people per game.
Winning a competition is an accomplishment you would think would draw more people in, but in reality many view it as job done and don’t return. After all, when you’re on top there’s only one way you can go.
Compare this to the plight of the long-suffering Mariners. They too made a grand final in their first season. And lost. And then, in that aforementioned Jets’ championship run, returned to the big one… and lost again.
And finally, two years ago in what was arguably the greatest game of football we’ve ever seen in our domestic competition… they were the bridesmaids for a third time.
I know several Mariners fans who have described that third grand final as the worst day of their lives. That feeling of literally being so close to the Championship and coming up short in the cruellest way possible is undesribable. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
But as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. And in the last couple of weeks across various social media platforms and by speaking to fans, I’ve never seen a group of supporters, however small in number, so locked in to a game as they are to this week’s decider.
A fourth grand final loss in eight years would be enough to break a man. Instead, they’ll be supporting them just as feverishly next year.
Which brings us back to the Wanderers. As I’ve mentioned in the past, sports fans in Sydney love nothing more than a winner. You only have to look at the Wanderers crowds – a run of five straight home games with crowds of less than 10,000 as they took on both Melbourne teams, Brisbane, Newcastle and Adelaide.
It wasn’t until New Year’s day, in a re-match with the Victory, that the turnstiles took in five figures. And it took a 6-1 drubbing of the Reds in their previous home game to coax these extra fans into the ground.
And you only have to look at South Sydney’s clash with Melbourne in the NRL last week to see how much winning makes a difference.
33,000 on hand for a match against the Storm? I was at that same fixture ten years ago and there were 4,000 there. And I’m certain that figure was inflated.
But the problem here is that crowds balloon when a team that was previously bad starts to play well. But they don’t stick around, regardless of the outcome, as we saw with the Jets.
Or indeed, the Sydney Roosters who played in five grand finals in the last decade but never saw a significant increase in attendances.
You need to stay fresh to get people on the seats. Even success becomes stale. The Jets and Sydney FC both posted their highest ever crowd averages for a season this year, and both missed the playoffs.
Why? Emile Heskey and Alessandro Del Piero.
Once you win, you need to keep changing things up to keep it interesting. A football team is a circus clown, and a Sydney sports fan is that semi-intrigued five year old.
So this Sunday I hope the Mariners win. Not just because of my sky blue affiliations, but because those fans truly deserve it.
Plus, after eight years of fervent support, these people aren’t going anywhere regardless of the outcome, something we can’t be sure of when talking of their opposition.
We may risk losing Wanderers fans to the live football scene permanently if they win too much, too soon.
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