WELL, as Johnny Warren might say, I told you so.

Of course we are still a few weeks away from the season opener, of course it was "just a friendly", and of course Fulham had only just resumed training. But Gold Coast United's emphatic victory over the EPL giants should end any lingering doubts about the quality team Miron Bleiberg has assembled. Our boys can play, alright?

The historic victory over Fulham achieves a few other things too. As Miron pointed out after the match, the result will make people around the world sit up and take notice, which is great for the A-League. Our domestic league is finally earning some global respect and results like this - particularly in the wake of Australia's superb World Cup qualification - surely help.

The 2-1 victory has also made non-football people on the Gold Coast sit up and take a bit more notice. It's not often the round ball game makes the front page of the local paper here, and you can bet a few mystified locals were asking "What's this Gold Coast United?"

The crowd of just over 10,000 also belies the difficulty of establishing a new club in this region. We don't have the population of Melbourne or even Brisbane, and Clive Palmer's deep pockets are going to come in handy as we build a loyal support base. It can be done, but it's gonna take time.

I am sure our team will bring out big crowds when we travel, but we really needed a result like this to make a splash in the local media. Buying full page advertisments is all well and good, but actually making the news is the key. A Round One defeat of Roar should be another good story!

And that's all part and parcel of the challenge football faces in this country. If the game is going to keep growing, the FFA needs to reach out to people who currently have only a passing interest in "soccer". The true believers are already attending A-League games, but we need to make the product more appealing in order to attract new audiences.

From that perspective, Gold Coast United is an interesting experiment. I think Cliva Palmer's much-ridiculed football knowledge is actually an asset here: he understands the mindset of your regular rugby and cricket fan, and tries to present his team in a way that will interest them.

For example, he wanted to stack his team with Socceroo players, because those are the names which all Aussies recognise. It sounded a bit silly at the time, but now we have a heap of Socceroos heading home and lifting the domestic game's profile wherever they go. I'm not saying that was all Clive's idea, but he and Miron talked Jason Culina into coming home, and spent a lot of time bending the ears of other national players. These things help.

I expect Perth to be a vastly improved team with Socceroos Mile Sterjovski, Jacob Burns, and (hopefully) Chris Coyne in their ranks, and I'm really looking forward to that match. Meanwhile, Gold Coast United's next big trial game is against Central Coast Mariners at Skilled Park on Saturday, July 18. It will be interesting to see what sort of crowd shows up.

PS: Personally, to my great regret, I missed the fireworks against Fulham after rushing back from Sydney for the game. When the teams kicked off, I was in bed reading "Jessica The Jazz Fairy" to my four-year old daughter. Her older brothers were supposed to be accompanying me to Skilled Park, but they had been seduced by the lure of cash prizes at a local chess tournament the next day, and there was no way they could handle both events without degenerating into zombie monsters. It was cold, I was tired, it was a weeknight, it was a late kickoff, the tickets were not cheap, my footballing friends couldn't make it, ah well...these things happen! Next time we beat an EPL club, I'll be there!