LAST Saturday night I fell in love all over again. It was an evening of such consistent beauty and such a breathtaking finish that I actually cried at the corny happy ending.

We’ve been together four years now, but we still have these moments of delirious excitement. Sometimes there are times of heartbreak and sorrow, but we face them together and I know now we will never part.

I’ve been in love before, of course. But it was never like this. The truth is, I was always looking for ‘the one’ and when I met the flashy NS (too painful to mention his name) a few years back it seemed like the real thing.

Yeah, I’ve still got his Christmas cards and the scarf and shirt he gave me, all those mementos of the numerous nights we spent together at North Sydney and Pittwater. But I only keep them to remind me of just how much better it is second time around.

OK, so I was a little reluctant to make a commitment at first, even when Lawrie said: “Trust me, darling, it’ll be different this time.” You see, it was always going be a long-distance love affair and I was, well… scared of getting hurt again.

But he was so persuasive. It was as if he knew what I needed better than I knew myself. He called on all his resources to win me over: Wilko, Hutch, Tobin, Kwasnik, Osman .... familiar faces I knew and trusted. And when I saw his home by the water, edged with palm trees I knew how Lizzie Bennett felt when she saw Mr Darcy’s mansion.

Sydney had called me and asked me out once or twice – but that didn’t make me feel special at all. He was all mouth and tight trousers and everyone knew he’d chat up anything in a skirt. (Or pants, so I’d heard. Although that might have been a rumour to make him sound more dangerously exciting than he was.) Sure, he flashed his money around but could he actually offer me any lasting happiness ?

Sometime early in Season One it just happened. It didn’t take long, to tell the truth. I felt an overwhelming desire to buy a yellow and blue scarf and I’m not ashamed to say I gave in to that desire at the first opportunity. Oh, it felt so good, so right. I wanted to tell the world about how happy I was. It had taken so long to find him but it was worth the wait.

Now we meet every weekend and the distance between us seems unimportant. My love intensifies with every year we are together and he still surprises me. I even wear yellow now (a colour I used to detest) because it gives him pleasure. He’s not the most popular, or the richest (although he recently did an amazing business deal) but to me he’s Colin Firth (only with better ball skills).

I saw Sydney on Saturday night too, as it happens. He didn’t impress me in the least. All that money and nothing to show for it. Came home on such a high and then turned on the TV to find those relationship gurus Slater & Hill saying we were ‘lucky’ to have had such a great night and that Sydney deserved something. Lucky ! The fools ! Couldn’t they see we deserved every moment of happiness ?

At our romantic Christmas sausage sizzle the next day, Lawrie agreed. He’d got a bit fired up the night before when Sydney tried something on. Okay, Sydney didn’t get what he was after but all the same...it was sleazy. Typical Sydney – going for a soft penalty against a guy whose leg he’d broken 12 months ago. Or as Lawrie might say “wha daur meddle wi’ me ?”

Yeah, I’ve had to become bi-lingual since I fell in love with this team. But as I woke up on Sunday morning still clinging to my scarf I knew I was truly happy, in a way Renee Zwellweger or Meg Ryan would never understand.

Recent ground-breaking research by the Ponds Institute has revealed that 24 percent of Australian women really do prefer watching the A-League to chickflicks.