As a bumper crowd of spectators piled through the turnstiles at Bluetongue last Saturday, the Mayor of Wyong and Mariners’ director Bob Graham gazed down from up in the stadium.  The next time I saw him he was being overwhelmed by hugs from the Yellow Army at the end of an unforgettable night. 

Like every other Mariners’ supporter, he was celebrating our biggest ever victory, our first hat-trick and one of the most exciting nights of football the A-League has ever seen.  And while the players performed magnificently, it was also fitting to see Bob and Peter Turnbull walking round the pitch at the end to cheers of applause. 

Last season the club was reportedly in dire financial straits, Arnie was on the verge of going to Sydney and we’d lost the spine of our team.  With the loss of Wilko, our beloved captain and steadfast defender in the off-season, it was hard not to see Season 8 as fraught with difficulty.

But somehow, the club’s owners saved the day.  In persuading Arnie not to defect to Sydney they gave every Mariner’s supporter a reason to believe we could keep fighting the good fight.  Sure, the only marquee we can afford is the one covering the merch stand and the biggest thing on the pitch is a giant inflatable sauce bottle, but who cares when you’ve got a team with so much spirit and tenacity?

Don’t get me wrong, I love having foreign superstars in the league but if my team can do well without them, so much the better.  For me, it’s so much sweeter to see a seasoned campaigner like McBreen, someone who has had his ups and downs (and believe me I’ve seen them all ) jumping for joy as he slots another one in the net.  The look of pure happiness on his face as he walked every inch of the stadium to high five the fans afterwards will stay with me forever. 

Then there’s the sheer pleasure of watching Tommy Rogic, a young player so gifted you can almost see the cheque-books circling every time the ball hits his feet.  He excelled himself on Saturday and if Holger fails to select him I’ll seriously start to wonder if he’s the right man for the job.  (I won’t mention Josh Rose again – oops!)

It would be easy to get carried away after such a win, easy to believe we’re some sort of merciless goal-machine poised to gun down any flashy pretenders who dare to set foot in our fortress.  We’ve  “splattered Sydney’s entrails” (thanks Harps) and that’s bound to give our confidence a massive boost.

But the flipside is that other teams will be itching to bring us down, itching to prove that 7-2 score line was simply a fluke.  There’s so much at stake for the “bigger” clubs this season, so much to prove for the new coaches on the block.  There’s a long, long season ahead and one high-scoring victory does not a Premiership make. 

But hey, didn’t it feel SO GOOD ?

And didn’t it prove, yet again, that the culture and stability of our small club is something so successful it should provide an example for others.  Yes, marquees bring in the punters and they’re wonderful to watch but you can’t build a whole league on glamour.  The Mariners may be small-town but their attitude is surely "world class". 

The same could be said of the travelling Sydney fans. They put on a fantastic display all night and it was great to see them holding up their scarves and singing at the end despite the pain they must have felt.  They could console themselves with the two excellent goals Sydney scored but surely they deserved to watch a much better performance in the second half, even with key players missing.

And with all the excitement generated at Bluetongue, I can only hope the casual Coastie spectators who turned up to see ADP will realise this A-League thing is pretty good weekend entertainment.  Hopefully they will come back to see whether the Mariners can turn it on against Brisbane again in two weeks time.  Bring on the giant inflatable sauce bottles!