Melbourne’s Olympic Park was full last night for the first time since the opening game by Rupert Murdoch’s Super League team Melbourne Storm in 1998.

Sadly for News Ltd, Storm only filled Olympic Park for that first game but if the free-flowing 2-2 draw between A-League teams Melbourne Victory and Perth Glory last night was any guide, sell-outs could well become a regular feature in Melbourne, especially given its multi-cultural mix.

Crikey scored a rare invite to the chairman’s 4pm “lunch” and bumped into all manner of interesting people getting behind the latest team attempting to challenge the stranglehold that AFL has over professional football in Melbourne.

Federal Sports Minister and Crikey fan Rod Kemp took his son Alex along for Father’s Day and said he was keeping an eye on the $15 million “investment” which taxpayers had ploughed into the new eight team format after corporate undertaker David Crawford did his review and the ethnic warlords were cleared out for Frank Lowy, Ron Walker and John Singleton to take control.

Like Crikey, Kempy admitted it was his first soccer match since Australia beat Uruguay 1-0 at the MCG in the opening leg of the 2002 World Cup qualifier back in 2001, but his son was getting right into the spirit.

Founding investor Glenn Wheatley was like a cat on a hot tin roof before the game but he said the corporate tickets and chairman’s lounge area had completely sold out for the whole season after the impressive 1-1 debut by Victory against Sydney last week when 25,000 turned up.

With commentary on SEN, Vega’s Francis Leach doing the ground announcing and even Harvey Silver, the founding executive producer of The FootyShow, helping out on the marketing front, Victory have put together quite a handy team.

John Elliott’s former right hand man and Victory chairman Geoff Lord is apparently playing some strange games with other investors now that Victory has debuted so well and the ownership structure might be resolved as early as today after a meeting with the Football Federation of Australia.

BRW reckons Lord, a former President of Hawthorn, is worth $130 million but so far he has only stumped up about $2 million of the $4.5 million needed by Victory and he’s still pushing hard to find a naming rights sponsor prepared to stump up $750,000. The tin is being rattled hard again this week for more corporate support.

The Age’s editor in chief Andrew Jaspan was also working the room hard – not only because he’s running “the official Melbourne Victory newspaper” but because his kids were officiating as ball retrievers. Every one of the 18,000 patrons were entitled to a free paid copy of The Sunday Age which must have been nice for circulation and presumably infuriated Herald Sun editor Peter Blunden given that his own internet editor, Alen Rados, was one of Victory’s founders.

Jaspan’s new boss Ron Walker didn’t make it to what was a mini major event for Melbourne but his old South Melbourne Soccer Club buddy Jeff Kennett showed up, as did Victorian deputy premier John Thwaites who was beaming in his Victory scarf as he addressed the crowd during the build up.

Several of Melbourne’s ethnic moguls have also got behind Victory including Harry Stimoulis – the only Rich Lister who used to catch the school bus with Crikey. It was good to catch up after 15 years although the shoulder still hasn’t fully recovered from big Harry’s killer corkies all those years ago.

Reality check for the A-League

Meanwhile, Graham Hand writes:

When over 25,000 turned up last weekend to Sydney FC’s first game in the new A-League, Club Chairman Walter Bugno could barely control his exhilaration. The crowd size was so unexpected that 10,000 fans missed the start of the game, as they struggled to buy tickets from a couple of undermanned offices. The next day, Football Federation Australia’s Frank Lowy and John O’Neill were more circumspect, and they have every reason to be. Look no further than the last great hope of Sydney football, Northern Spirit, for a heart-breaking false dawn and another lost opportunity.

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