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The A-League owes some gratitude to the Central Coast Mariners. Not only did they record a vital AFC Champions League win in midweek, they proved in the process that Asian sides are far from unbeatable.
It took a while for Australians to cotton on to just how strong Asian football is, but when we did, we probably overcompensated for our earlier naivety.
Suddenly Mariners coach Phil Moss would have you believe Sanfrecce Hiroshima are the “best side to have ever played in Gosford,” despite the fact the southern Japanese outfit possess a mediocre ACL record.
Never mind the overestimation of Sanfrecce’s abilities, the important thing for Australian football is that the defending A-League champions beat the two-time J. League champions on Tuesday night.
And in doing so, the Mariners hopefully dispelled the frustrating notion that Japanese teams are somehow unbeatable.
If anything, Japanese clubs tend to struggle away from home, particularly against teams willing to play a direct style of football – a lesson the Mariners should have learnt from the win over Sanfrecce.
What we also learnt is the Gosford community have very little appetite for watching Champions League football.
A crowd of just over 2,000 was frankly embarrassing, but the Mariners themselves are hardly to blame.
Not only did the club put together an enticing three-game membership package, but the Mariners work hard to promote the ACL through the media.
Mariners crowds have been poor across the board of late, but to put things into perspective, the clash between Yokohama F. Marinos and glamour club Guangzhou Evergrande only attracted 12,000 fans in what is one of Asia’s largest cities.
Indeed, Sanfrecce only drew just over 6,000 fans themselves to their first group-stage fixture this year, suggesting a lack of public interest is not just an Australian problem.
At any rate, the Mariners should take plenty of heart from their crucial midweek win, which sets them up for a couple of fascinating fixtures against Beijing Guoan.
No doubt their home exploits helped inspire Western Sydney Wanderers on the road, as Tony Popovic’s side recorded a hard-fought 1-0 win over Chinese side Guizhou Renhe.
Like his Melbourne Victory counterpart Kevin Muscat, the oft-tinkering Popovic didn’t exactly send out his strongest team.
Yet if competing on duel fronts is all about sensible rotation, is it any surprise that A-League clubs – who fancy themselves as being on a hiding to nothing in the ACL – might save their strongest starting XI for domestic duties?
Perhaps if Victory had retained a bit more experience on the pitch, they wouldn’t have virtually thrown away two points with some sloppy defending against South Korean hotshots Jeonbuk.
You certainly can’t afford to give a former English Premier League striker all the time and space he wants, as the Victory defence eventually discovered when veteran Lee Dong-Gook intervened.
The former Middlesbrough man showed exactly the kind of finishing which makes the ACL such a step up for Australian clubs, although Muscat’s men did well to recover from the shock of Lee’s stunning second goal to forge an equaliser of their own.
The question now is whether any of the three Australian combatants can go on and use their ACL form to launch a late-season assault on the A-League.
All three have been in decidedly patchy form of late, so much so that Brisbane Roar are practically shoe-ins to win the Premiership.
However, if form going into the finals is important, then none of the three ACL representatives can afford to enter them out of form and on the back of a string of defeats.
That’s why the Mariners’ win on Tuesday should help break the mood of negativity, and remind Australian teams there’s no reason to approach the ACL with self-defeating pessimism.
Kudos to all three teams then, in what was a good week for Australian sides.