The future of Australian football has arrived - and it's popular, successful, and multi-ethnic. May 25, 1997, saw the Brisbane Strikers break two records: the first being the inaugural national soccer championship for a Queensland club, and the second, and most important, the largest crowd for a national league grand final, of some 40,446 paying customers.

Strikers player/coach Frank Farina summed up the importance of the 2-0 victory over Sydney United: "This will do more for the game here and throughout the country than anything I could have dreamed of achieving. This will show the Australian sporting public what a great game we have and it will show there is a place for us in the big picture".

The Strikers won the right to host their first national league grand final after a 2-2 aggregate score against minor premiers Sydney United. The first leg of the tie in Brisbane saw a record 14,666 supporters witness a 1-0 victory, courtesy of a superbly crafted Sean Cranney goal.

Following the match, United coach Branko Culina decided to boost Brisbane's motivation with a number of disparaging remarks about Brisbane's veteran players. According to Culina, United were going to run the "Dad's Army" Strikers all over Parramatta Stadium in the return leg. United's fitter Socceroo representatives indeed were the tip of most experts to overcome the deficit and win the hosting rights.
Yet as the saying goes, the ball is round in football and strange things can happen. United blitzed the Strikers in the first half at Parramatta before a disappointing crowd of 7,727, with goals from Jason Culina and Kresimir Marusic. Culina indeed was unlucky not to net a double as he placed his second shot a few feet wide of Clint Bolton's far post. At half-time the Strikers appeared to be out of the tie, especially following confirmation that Farina would not be playing.

The Strikers ran out at half-time in a more determined frame of mind and began to camp in the United third of the pitch. With Marusic in the dressing room and Robert Enes suffering the effects of an asthma attack, the Strikers gained the ascendancy. Sean Cranney finally got behind the Sydney defence and it was Wayne Knipe who scored the vital away goal. The Strikers managed to survive the last 13 minutes of the match to ensure a grand final berth.

The victory gave real football a place on the front page of local daily The Courier-Mail with some 200 flag-waving supporters at Brisbane airport to welcome home the victorious Queenslanders. They had lost the match, but won the tie. With ticket prices at only $20 for reserved grandstand, $15 for general grandstand and $10 for the outer, some 5,000 tickets for the grand final were sold on the first day alone. Brisbane, for many years a bastion of the oval-ball codes, was rapidly being converted to the World Game.

Following the historic grand final berth come the announcement from the Strikers that they were considering listing on the Stock Exchange. At the press conference to announce the proposition, Frank Farina confirmed that he had re-signed with the club until 1999. SocAus chairman David Hill gave his support to the propsed listing:

"I think broadening the capital base is a good thing. The level of professionalism in Australia is going to increase and the demand on clubs is also bound to increase, so Brisbane will certainly have our 100 per cent support".

The Strikers would be joining other great football clubs in the world who currently are listed, including Manchester United, and Glasgow Celtic. The Brisbane Broncos similarly are listed on the ASX under the guise of Pacific Sports Entertainment, a company which also controls the Brisbane Bullets and Bandits clubs.

After operating "on a knife edge" (Strikers chairman Ian Brusasco) for a number of years, the sharemarket listing would give the Strikers the capital necessary for continued expansion, improved marketing and player budgets. With the entry of the rich Carlton club in the NSL in 1997/98, and continued success of Perth Glory, the national league is rapidly approaching professionalism. Professionalism necessitates money, whether through sponsorships, merchandising, or gate takings. It cannot be acheived through relying upon a few thousand die-hard supporters.

After a week of strong media interest in Brisbane, at last the big day arrived. After experiencing a cloudy, rainy day on the Saturday, Sunday dawned clear and sunny. It was as if the day had been destined by a higher authority to be Brisbane's day. According to media reports, some 30,000 tickets had been pre-sold by Saturday - already ensuring that the match would be the biggest in Queensland soccer history. Yet by half-time the gates were closed as some 40,446 patrons packed into Suncorp to witness the greatest day in the history of the 20 year old national league.

Following the incident at Parramatta Stadium the previous week, the pressure was on the United supporters to prove that they had been harshly judged by the administration. For the large part, the United supporters were well behaved, with the police escorting a couple of excitable fans away to the jeers of the Brisbane supporters.

The match began with an explosive start from the Strikers, with midfielder Chay Hews, not normally a first-team player, giving Zjelko Kalac a wake-up call with a scorching long-range blast into the Spiderman's top right corner. Kalac saved the shot and of the two teams, the Strikers were the quickest to settle on a pitch that had been badly damaged by a rugby league game played the previous day.
At half-time neither side had opened their account, United's best chance coming from a shot from Milicic which missed Bolton's far post by half a metre.

The Strikers though yet again came out strongly in the second half. Two minutes after the re-start it was Brisbane who got the all-important goal. Chay Hews, picked out by the watching Terry Venables as one of the best players on the park, crossed the ball into the penalty area. Somehow the ball went through the legs of United skipper Mark Babic and rolled to Farina at the far post. Farina of course does not miss those sort of chances and it was Brisbane who had the lead to the overwhelming joy of the parochial Queensland crowd. Branko Culina tried to rejuvenate his side, injecting Mark Rudan into the back-line and reverting to man-to-man marking, but the gamble badly backfired when the Strikers had three players against one and it was Sean Cranney who provided the pass for Rod Brown to slot home. Although there was still 21 minutes left on the clock, the two goal margin proved insurmountable for United, who despite a scorching volley from Aytec Genc, had few attempts at the Brisbane goal. Every United high ball into the box seemed to stick to Clint Bolton's gloves like superglue. Marusic was marked out of the game by Glen Gwynne with Alan Hunter also superbly marshalling the Brisbane defence in his last game for the Strikers.

The result gave soccer front-page coverage in the The Australian and The Courier-
Mail. The Australian had the heading: "Soccer scores one for ethnic harmony", with the Courier- Mail's being: "Frank's fairytale comes true". With the prospect of a further capital injection from the proposed ASX listing, and undoubted increased sponsorship and media coverage for the next season, the future is bright for the Strikers. The future is indeed bright for the game in this football backwater, as Queensland has demonstrated that the round ball game is indeed capable of gaining the interest of the whole community, in a multi-ethnic, harmonious manner.

The future for United however looked less promising with the prospect of most of the grand final team leaving the club, including possibly the coach who had brought them to the pinnacle of Australian football. In years to come, football enthusiasts will no doubt look back upon the Strikers' first grand final victory as not just a historic day for Queensland sport (akin to winning the Sheffield Sheild for the first time), but also the beginning of a new age for the World Game in Australia.
On a day in which the $300 million News Limited owned Super League could only attract 14,167 patrons to watch the Brisbane Broncos entertain the North Queensland Cowboys, the Strikers had to close the gates on thousands of fans at Suncorp Stadium.

The club whose players were deemed unworthy of representing their country had outclassed a team filled with Socceroos, in front of the national coach.
With Brisbane's younger brigade maturing rapidly, it will be hard to find a bookmaker willing to offer 66-1 odds on a Strikers championship in 1997/98, as was the price at the beginning of the 1996/97 season.