I have been an Arsenal fan since 1972 - rusted-on since the first time I was allowed to get up and watch the FA Cup final. It was the red team or the white team and I tossed a coin - red lost the game, but won my eternal affection.

Despite the distance - despite growing up in North Sydney instead of North London - Arsenal have been a huge part of my life. I've been both to Highbury and Ashburton Grove and with the rise of the internet and cable television, it's now easy to follow your team and feel like you've really got your finger on the pulse of your favourite club.

But I've been feeling a strange new emotion in the last year or two.

If there's one team I've loved better than the Gunners, it's the Socceroos. I felt those 32 years of non-World Cup pain far more than most and ached - desperately - for something like the A-League to come along.

As soon as it did, I was immediately a dyed-in-the-wool Mariners fan (living, as I do, at Avoca Beach) long before they kicked a ball in anger.

But despite being my new flame, the Mariners couldn't compete with my true love - the Gunners. Not at first.

It takes time for a truly meaningful relationship to develop. If the Mariners were going to be more than a one-night-shag and expect me to respect them in the morning, they'd have to prove that they were going to be around for a while in a competition that was worthy of my undying attention.

With three Grand Final appearances in six years, the Mariners have kept their side of the bargain, but in all honesty, it's the league I've totally fallen for.

Yes, I still love the Gunners and always will, but I am genuinely more interested in what happens in the A-League these days than the EPL.

Some of my Euro-snob mates might curl their lips in a scorn worthy of Sid Vicious himself, but the A-League has genuinely come of age. When I turn to the football pages, as I always do before anything else (Revolution in Libya? Financial crisis in Europe? Who gives a rat's when the Roar are going for the record?) it's no longer the EPL news I read first. Now that the A-League has grown up, I am deeply concerned with whether Mustafa Amini will start - fascinated by Mehmet Durakovic's efforts to keep his job - utterly transfixed by the improving quality on the pitch and really impatient to see how the Roar and the Mariners do in the ACL this time (I'm tipping both to get through to the knock out stage and Brisbane to at least match Adelaide's effort in making the final as long as they hang on to Ange).

People often ask me about the state of the league and whether football will ever genuinely stand shoulder to shoulder with the AFL and NRL. This may sound like a big call (and it's a call that's been made wrongly plenty of times in the past), but I suggest that inside ten years football will have all but equal billing - at least with the NRL.

There is so much to love about our game these days - regular World Cup appearances; dramatically improving technical quality of the league; constant replenishment of the playing roster by exciting newcomers every year. One of the best consequences of the league's success has been the creation of a genuine pathway to keep young elite athletes in the sport. As a person who's been involved with coaching for the last few years, I am aware of the quality coming through right now in the Under 12 - 16 age groups - we are in for very exciting times indeed as the cream rises to the top of an ever larger and more competitive batch of hopefuls.

Best of all - so many people are talking about the league. Maybe not the Euro-snobs, but rugby people, league people - I don't really mix with AFL people - they've all suddenly got some sort of opinion about what's happening re the A-League or the Socceroos. The game is too big to patronise - too big to ignore - and I think back to the simple days when all I had to do was love Arsenal. And I'm confused.

Maybe the A-League was my unlovely bit on the side when she first came along, but she's a whole lot fitter now and I am proud to walk down the street holding her hand. Arsenal is watching jealously and her EPL mother is bristling, hands on hips and clutching the rolling pin, but I don't care.

I now love the A-League better than the EPL, and I'll bet most of you reading this do also.

Adrian Deans is the author of Mr Cleansheets - published by Vulgar Press, distributed by Dennis Jones and Associates and available in all good book stores and in ebook form on www.mrcleansheets.com