Despite persistent headlines about the finances of the domestic competition, Heart chief executive Scott Munn said it was all positive for the club as they head into the 2012/13 campaign.

Memberships are continuing to track upwards and the unbudgeted sale of players has given the club’s books a healthy boost.

“We track other codes as well and we know that second and third years in league, AFL and rugby – the Rebels - all their memberships declined significantly,” Munn said.

“And from year one to year two we tracked about 20 per cent up. So we think it’s bullish to track another 20 per cent up but that’s our goal.

“Our target this year is 9000 members and our goal is to be at 7000 from round one. We’re on track to get there at this point.”

Munn refuted suggestions the franchise is funding its enterprise on the back of selling some of Australia’s best and brightest.

“Our goal in year three was to be in a break even position for this club and currently where we sit and based on our forecasts for the year ahead we’re going to do that,” he said.

“For year three of a start-up A-League club, and the second team in Melbourne, I think that’s a great achievement if we are able to do it.

“But we don’t budget to sell one player. We don’t sit here looking at the players we’ve got thinking we’re going to sell them and we don’t go off trying to sell them.

“Does it help us? Of course it does. To have unbudgeted revenue into a club, we’d be lying to say that it doesn’t help us and assist us in our goals.

“That doesn’t mean it is our goal. We want to give (these footballers) the best opportunity to play and if they have that environment and some club comes along we’re supportive.”

The sale of young guns Curtis Good (Newcastle United), Eli Babalj (Red Star Belgrade) and Brendan Hamill (Seongnam Ilhwa) reportedly netted the club about $1.6 million.

“One of our very clear goals early on, before we started, was to get a young man to the EPL and we set ourselves a three to five-year time line to do that,” Munn said.

“Lucky for us we’ve achieved that in our second year with Curtis Good and not only to the EPL but to one of the biggest clubs in the EPL.

“We see that as our job. We know ours isn’t the biggest league in the world and if we can provide a pathway for young footballers to continue to grow and have an opportunity to play in some of the biggest leagues around the world – whether it is in the EPL or Europe – we think that’s absolutely our role.

“We’ve set ourselves goals around having players making the Socceroos and the Young Socceroos. Last year having Michael Marrone called into the Socceroos - we were really happy about it.

“We set ourselves goals around our players making the Olyroos and we were lucky enough to have Mate Dugandzic, Jason Hoffman, Aziz Behich all playing in representative teams.

“That’s something we’re really proud of because we see that youth is vital and it’s a clear point of difference to some of the other teams we compete with.”

And there’s more where they came from. Heart have big hopes that 18-year-old Young Socceroos defender David Vrankovic is a star of the future.

Munn added: “We think we have four or five guys who will certainly be in the top 10 or 20 young players in Australia.”