I WAS reminded the other day of how much I have been missing the A-League, when I found myself singing along to the Allens' lollies commercial.
The one with the oversized kewpie doll and the whistled, music-box tune. I'm pretty sure that the ad doesn't end with the words "... bastards f@ck off home", but in my head there was a stadium with oversized flags at the northern end and thousands of people holding blue scarves above their heads belting out the tune, S-Y-D-N... You know how it goes...
A lot has changed since I last sung that song in earnest (and yes, we do sing it on the sidelines too). How far we have come is possibly best demonstrated by the fact that big blue is now a red and I honestly don't mind. In fact, I wish him well. Not too well of course, but I hope that Rudes and Fyfey have a happy and injury free season at the club that I think are our biggest rivals in the best sense of the word (it may just be that shared experience of cold-sweats at the mention of Kosmina, but the Pissants strike me as not being too bad a bunch).
We have our own Adelaide boy in our ranks. By the end of last season, he went under the moniker of he-who-shall-not-be-named, or boo for short. It was an inglorious year for all concerned.
He's still our marquee player and will be getting paid somewhere north of a million bucks to wear the blue jersey. I was nevertheless momentarily surprised to see his image on my membership card. The club has done a good job in deflecting attention from him over the off-season, but there is no doubting that Aloisi needs to deliver for us this season.
And so to the point of this blog - how much is enough?
Well - a lot I think. The A-League's marquee benchmark was set in season 1 by Dwight Yorke. Make no mistake about it - he won us the title. He played from defensive midfielder to striker, as required. He controlled the tempo of every match he was in. He provided every other Sydney player with an easy out-ball when under pressure - because Dwight could always see a run or a pass out of trouble and had the game to execute it. He left us unwillingly, to re-join the hardest league in the world and became the glue that kept Sunderland up in their first year - for which he was given the honour of switching on the Christmas tree in the town square. That says it all.
Then there was Juninho - who played most of his matches on cortisone injections and sheer will-power. He never scored, but always put himself about and was pure class on and off the field. We knew he was giving his best, and he was a joy to watch. It didn't work out the way anyone wanted, but oh, what might have been.
So what should we expect of our marquee player this year, and what would be a good return for him? Stats wise, if he averaged a goal or an assist every game, that would be a great return. Probably enough to re-sign him next year. Undoubtedly, he has set his own goals and with a World Cup in the offering, those standards would be very high. If Dukes is in the picture and Bruce and Nikita are scoring in Turkey and Holland, there will likely be only one A-League striker going to South Africa.
So Aloisi is going to have to be the best striker in the league this year, if he wants that spot. He's going to have to be fast and hungry and hard a the ball, in a way he wasn't really, last year. He will have to win us games; in fact he will probably have to win us the title. He will have to knock off Archie and Mile, both of whom have pretty solid claims already, as well as a host of decent wannabies also eyeing that spot.
Someone is going to be very disappointed when the World Cup squad is eventually named. I really hope it's not John Aloisi.
