AND SO it begins. No more bullshit. No more predictions. Game time.

Come the end of the working week, Hindmarsh comes alive with Friday Night (Red) Fever.  With the very smart decision to play almost all home games (11 of 14) on Friday night Hindmarsh is going to be the place to be for end of week drinks and goals. Fans know where they'll be on Friday at 7:30 and I expect an increase in crowd numbers this year to scream the Reds to victory.

First up, the reinvented, stripy purple mob from the west.  With three fringe Socceroos (alright, Sterj IS a starter) and a much improved squad, Glory look set to reclaim their place at the top end of Australian football. Personally I've always had a soft spot for them (everyone loves a loser) but I'm afraid that this week they'll have to settle for some extra game time in their legs because they'll be going home with diddly-squat.

While Perth will be trying desperately to gel as a team, Adelaide will simply take them apart. The Hindmarsh fortress will claim its first victim of 2009. Will the fans be excited? Will we be the 12th and 13th player. What do you reckon? We've been waiting and we're baying for blood.

Let's face it, football is a tribal game. All week we can be thoughtful, polite, reasonable, analytical, even-minded. But come kick-off, we're in the Red zone. Our team right or wrong. Anyone who gets in our way....?

Has the Red mist descended, you might ask? Indeed it has. Hopefully, across the country fans are starting to reach for their eye-patches and beginning to focus on their team, right or wrong. The pulse begins to race, the butterflies reel wildly around your intestinal tracts, the sweat beads your brow and - at the end of that first, sacred 90 minutes - your throat feels like it's been used to shred the cheese for every pizza cooked in the last six months.

Then - we have the sad or euphoric business of dissecting the games. The coulds, shoulds and ifs. The villains, heroes and also-rans. The how-we-would-have-done-it-if-we-were-in-charge-or-on-the field. The wisdom, stupidity, ignorance and insight that makes being a fan more fun than being a spectator.

Football is back. The A-League V5 is about to begin and it's looking bigger, better and more interesting than ever before.

Take a moment to think back to those years in the wilderness.  The years when 'soccer' hardly rated a mention and we had to pick off scraps from the other side of the world. Those years are gone. No offence to those who ploughed the hard ground to make this present happiness possible, but - those years are gone.

The Reds for the Premiership! The Reds for Champions! The Reds to win the ACL! Today it's all possible.

Good luck to all of you who support the other tribes. May your teams win against everyone except us. Unless it impacts on us, in which case - lose.

Real football is upon us. God is in heaven, the stars are aligned and all is right with the world.

Until next week.

(For those pedants who noticed that I said "no more predictions" and then made about 64 - forgive me. I'm a fan).