Brisbane just isn't like Sydney and Melbourne. And most of us up here agree that is a bloody good thing.
Sure, we're polite enough to let our southern cousins tell us everything that is wrong about our fair metropolis; but we're also smart enough to simply ignore them and continue doing things our own way.
My fellow Brisbanites know what I'm talking about.
Who amongst us hasn't heard a Melburnian recommend we convert our inner-city alleyways from dank to wank with a few boutique bars and a trendy coffee shop or two?
Of course, that's only when they're not bleating on about the miracle of trams - you know, those things that look like buses, act like buses but unlike buses can only run on rails so their really not as good as buses, are they?
Sydneysiders aren't any better mind you.
They complain about how cane toads litter our fair suburbs but refuse to take the time to learn the finer points of backyard cane toad golf.
They also don't seem to appreciate that if we embraced their fancy-pants daylight savings time it would only serve to delay our evening tee-off by an hour. Fools.
Despite my jibes though, I will reluctantly admit that Sydney and Melbourne aren't all bad. In fact, there is one thing in particular they do far better than Brisbane - host a grand final.
Granted, this is because we Brisvegans have never really had a chance since Melbourne hold a monopoly on the AFL showpiece and Sydney always hosts the NRL variety. But still credit where it is due, I suppose.
So what I believe we should do is steal the best of their ideas and then spice it up with a bit of that old Brisbane can-do attitude. Already, I think we are off to a pretty good start.
To start the week an official launch will be held in the Queen St Mall Monday March 7. Further, the highly-anticipated Fan Forum will be in Brisbane on Thursday March 10 and Brisbane Roar's Saturday March 12 training session will be open to the general public - with official premiers t-shirts for sale no less.
Brisbane alt-rock legends Regurgitator have also been announced as the pre-game entertainment on Grand Final Day itself (yes, they deserve a paragraph to themselves because they rock oh-so-damn-hard).
Additionally, I feel quite certain that the relevant parties are at the very least considering an invite-only breakfast or lunch and perhaps a ‘live site' at either King George Square or Brisbane Square.
Still, that leaves a few days spare for the marketing teams at the FFA, Brisbane Roar and Brisbane City Council to provide the city with a highly contagious dose of grand final fever.
So I thought why not throw a few mad-capped suggestions their way? And, as per usual with this blog, I won't let time constraints, cost or just general impracticality get in the way of what I believe is a good idea.
So here we go:
Football On The River
Grand Final Week is about taking what is good and making it all that much better.
The good in this case is the Roar Rapid Fire Field - an inflatable, 20 metres of football field usually found on match days at the Northern End of Suncorp Stadium. The better is taking it off the grass and putting it in the Brisbane River.
As I see it, we begin with hiring out that most iconic of Brisbane boats - The Kookaburra Queen. We clear the top deck, inflate the Rapid Fire Field and put some over-sized Roar flags in as corner posts. Then we populate it with youth team players for a bit of five-a-side madness all while the boat chugs up and down the CBD stretch of the river for an hour or so during lunch time.
Get a certain radio station sponsor to broadcast live from the vessel, thus getting the word out, and watch the people congregate en masse to take in this most peculiar of sights. They'll be crowding the pedestrian bridges, taking photos from the Wheel of Brisbane, and abandoning their desks to stand three deep at skyscraper windows.
All that's left to do at that point is give Roary a captain's hat (maybe one of those big Captain Cook numbers), have him wave to the adoring crowds and you've got yourself a floating publicity stunt the likes of which Brisvegas has never seen before and that the mainstream news channels would be loathe to ignore.
Light The Town Orange
In my opinion, everything that can be orange should be orange around Brisbane town for A-League Grand Final Week. Every CityCat should fly a Roar flag as should the Story Bridge. Every street light banner space should be drafted in to service too.
But that all seems so obvious doesn't it, so already done? We have to keep pushing it further.
The Kangaroo Point cliff's night time lights seem to have the right idea for mine. So let's build on that. First, we could set the normally alternating coloured lights on Kurilpa Bridge and Treasury Casino to a permanent retina searing orange. Secondly, we could also change the colour of the bulb in Stefan's Sky Needle and send a rotating beam of orange hope out over the suburbs.
Heck, while we're changing lights we might as well set all the traffic signals in the inner-city to orange as well. It's not like peak-hour traffic could get much worse anyway. And who knows, it might even make things better.
I don't think it would be that hard to get council support either. Once convinced it would encourage more cross-town traffic into the under-utilised Clem7 Tunnel, they might even make it a permanent thing.
Flash Mob Mentality
I realise flash mobbing is more than a touch last decade but I really don't care. In my opinion it's still something that can be harnessed for good instead of Rick Astley related evil. It's all a matter of how you go about it.
What we need is a group of vocal Roar fans recruited through social media networks who at a designated time and place converge, pull out their Roar scarves and start chanting like they have the toilet seat already won.
I think a minute or so of "Bouncy, Bouncy Brisbane Roar" would do the trick before the whole mob simply meld back into the general population as if nothing odd has happened at all.
Do that two dozen times over the course of the week in varying locales - train stations, university campuses, building foyers, pedestrian malls - and I believe we'll start demanding some attention from the wider population.
And in the process we will show everyone who doesn't already know exactly what actively supporting a football team sounds like. It'd be a guerrilla marketing campaign, flash mob and a public service all rolled in to one.
Well, there you have it then. Those are my suggestions.
Some of you will think me mad. Others, southerners most likely, probably stopped reading very early on. But if you made it this far then you should feel inclined to post your suggestions - tell me, how do you think we can make Grand Final Week in Brisbane a grand occasion indeed?
