The battle for bums on seats is particularly fierce in the harbour city but the club hopes its commitment to engage the community will encourage new followers with success from Vitezslav Lavicka and his players hopefully doing the rest.  

The average gate for home games last season was just over 12,300 as the club failed to make the A-League finals for the first time.

While Sydney is a tough market with several NRL sides, AFL and Rugby, the club is happy with the start it has made to win back former fans and members as well as attracting new ones.

"We are still working hard to build up the membership numbers and we will surpass last year's numbers," CEO Stefan Kamasz told au.fourfourtwo.com. "In terms of the crowd, I'm certain we'll exceed the crowds we had last year by quite a few thousand.

"It's fair to say we're looking to try and achieve a crowd of 17,000 average across the season, which is a significant increase on last year. That's about 40 per cent up on last year.

"We know a lot of that is dependent upon the way the team plays but the way things are shaping up and you have a sense of how things are going to go, and everyone I speak to both inside the club and outside the club has got the same feeling that this could be our year."

If the club succeeds in hitting its aim, it will better the 16,669 average achieved during the A-League's inaugural campaign - a season that ended with the Championship.