The stage is set. The players have taken to the field and are ready to kick off. The referee blows his whistle...

But there’s no signal from Fox Sports. No wild cheer as play begins. In fact, there’s practically no one here.

Ladies & Gentlemen, welcome to the National Youth League.

It’s a beautiful day, perfect for a football match. However, for some reason, there are only about 200 people here.

The question is, why?

To be brutally honest, it was not the most amazing football match I’ve ever seen but when you compare it to the first team match just after, it was on a pretty even par in most respects.

The quality of the football was very high, especially for a league in its inaugural season. Both sides had obviously worked hard to find stand out talent and had succeeded. The commitment from the players was there too.

After watching the senior team match, the youth fixture may have actually been better to watch. Not just because there was no loud and annoying people there who got up to get beer every 5 minutes but because the youth players just seemed to be more committed than the senior players.

A particularly bright spark was Jets midfielder Adrian Karakolevski, who not only worked his butt off but bagged himself a goal too. Throughout the game he displayed great skill and is definitely one to watch. The standout for the Mariners was defender Nathan Sherlock. He had a solid performance and barely put a foot wrong.

Overall, the Jets were the stronger side. The Mariners lacked the finishing touch in the box that the Jets seemed to have down pat. They had many scoring opportunities, however, failed to put them away.

The NYL is great and everybody should see at least one match this season. This is especially recommended if the match is a curtain raiser to an A-League match. Just think about it:

a) Getting there earlier means you’ll not only get to see MORE football, but you’ll also get a great parking spot.

b) If you get to the stadium early, they pretty much let you sit wherever you want. Sit near the entrance to the tunnel. You’ll witness some interesting things. VERY interesting things.

c) In five years, some of these kids will be A-League stars. And you’ll be able to brag to your mates about how you spotted them when they were 17 and thought they’d be this good too.

d) You can buy merchandise before everyone else. When something new comes out (this is very rare, I know, but not completely unheard of), you can sit there with it and smile happily at people as they look at how beautiful you are in your new shirt etc.

e) No queues for the toilets. Enough said.

I could go on and on but I won’t. Just do yourself a favour, if there’s an NYL match near you, go and see it. You won’t be disappointed.

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SPOTTED:

(Alright, as I said before, when you get to games early you see interesting things. Well, here’s some interesting things I saw before the NYL game…)

- Graham Arnold & Robbie Slater at McDonald’s Gosford. Drinking coffee. Yes, Arnie is still alive. No, they weren’t at the NYL game.

- Dutchy chatting to Matthew Breeze before the match. Looked very friendly.

- Matt Simon, lovingly putting his arm around Ahmad Elrich.

- A man who was either Henk Duut, Andre Rieu or some sort of combination of the two, sitting with the Jets during the NYL game.