In pre-season campaigns past deciding which non-competitive fixture to attend in Brisvegas was a rather simple matter for Roar supporters.
Orange clad fans could either brave the cold, weeknight air at one of several shabby suburban club grounds for free, warmed only by bad coffee while witnessing a glorified training run littered with unpublicised trialists; or they could part with their hard-earned for a grandstand seat in the afternoon sun at Australia's premier rectangular stadium to watch a full strength squad battle a foreign club in the annual Roar Against Racism fixture.
This decision for most supporters was a no-brainer - if it wasn't your local club side playing against Roar then why would you bother sitting on a piles-inducing steel bleacher when you could instead stay home to play the latest incarnation of FIFA or Football Manager?
It had reached the point that after four years of Roar Against Racism matches a wonderful, winter tradition was beginning to emerge for Brisbane Roar fans. These one-off games, complete with Mickey Mouse trophy presentation after the final whistle, were attracting better quality teams and in turn larger, more enthusiastic crowds (even if a significant proportion of them were cheering on the visitors).
Alas, all that is no more.
Following the Queensland Government's decision to withdraw their naming rights support for the event, this preseason no foreign club will grace the verdant playing surface at Suncorp Stadium. Instead we have several preseason friendlies heavy on "community engagement" and light on any sense of occasion.
While there are some enticing fixtures scheduled nearer the season proper - in particular a double header with the QSL Grand Final and a match against an Adelaide United team with more than their fair share of ex-Brisbane players - it appears an opportunity has been missed to create a bona fide out-of-season match-day experience for fans desperately seeking respite from this unusually long off-season.
In particular, I am referring to the showdown with former NSL champions Brisbane Strikers at Perry Park that has been scheduled for the night before the public holiday instead of on the public holiday itself, thus denying families the best opportunity of attending the match.
While some may doubt how popular this fixture might be, your humble blogger does not.
For mine, this encounter had the potential to be a match of significance to local football fans - a belief mainly formed because my disparate and sometimes flaky match-day crew, after mistakenly believing the game was to be played on the public holiday, had swelled to nearly three times its normal size.
As a group we were genuinely excited at the prospect of revisiting the spiritual home of Queensland football on our state mandated day-off for a match that could easily be dubbed The Battle of Brisbane - a game of new football v old soccer.
Our heads were swimming with romanticised notions of lounging on the grass embankment in the warm sunshine and knocking back a few cold beers while reminiscing about the matches we had once witnessed at the now slightly worse-for-wear, Bowen Hills ground.
Personally, I was mulling over whether to wear a Roar jersey or an old Strikers number for the occasion and even considered getting out the fabric scissors and stitching the two halves together in a fashionably tragic tribute to Brisbane's football history.
It was also going to be the first visit to Perry Park for our youngest crew member, a plucky six-year-old whose devotion to the Roar is so extraordinary his father was genuinely worried about how the little tyke would take the news of Luke Devere's departure earlier this year. The answer - not all that well, it seems.
In short, this match had the potential to fill that aching void left by the demise of the Roar Against Racism fixture despite not involving a big foreign club. It also had the potential to become an annual tradition and an alternative to the Ekka's overpriced and overhyped position as the place to be on Brisbane's annual show holiday.
Instead, due to the scheduling, this match will be like any other suburban preseason hit-out - sparsely attended and all but ignored except by a few die-hards and your always humble blogger.
But it isn't just the fans that will be missing out. The Brisbane Strikers could have potentially made a tidy profit from the sale of food and drink to a public holiday crowd that with the right promotion may have nudged near five thousand.
Such a turnout would've likely benefitted the FFA's reported courting of the Striker's owners, The Clem Jones Group, as they seek new investors in the Brisbane Roar franchise. After all, it has been many years since a crowd that large has filled Perry Park's sole and somewhat shaky grandstand.
But alas, like the Roar Against Racism fixture, it is simply not to be and we, the football fans of this town, are all the poorer for it.
So here's my piece of completely unsolicited yet friendly advice for my beloved A-League club - please consider taking advantage of the Ekka public holiday when scheduling next year's pre-season fixtures.
The readers of this website repeatedly state that football clubs are all about tradition and an annual Battle of Brisbane provides an enviable opportunity for our burgeoning club to create its own tradition separate from the A-League competition.
After all, if "engaging the community" is what it's all about then I don't think the club could do much better than giving the city's football community as a whole a true occasion with which to be engaged.
PS: If you're interested, here's a mock-up of the hybrid jersey I was considering creating. And of course I would get the Matt McKay's name printed on the back, mainly because it would be a bit cheaper than that other Roar/Strikers legend Shane Stefanutto. Sorry Shane.
