As you turn onto Cansdale Street from the Brisbane Corso, the first thing that hits you is the smell of sewage. On the right is a large waste facility ringed by a barbed wire fence, while on the left is a large billboard branded with the AFL logo. Tucked behind AFL Queensland’s Headquarters and the Fairfield Sewage Treatment Plant are two adjacent football grounds. At the smaller Leyshon Park, El Salvador FC have marked their territory by painting their blue and white logo on the wall of the clubhouse. On the opposite side of the street, the more sophisticated Goodwin Park is home to Olympic FC. In order to retain their club name, and the most visible symbol of their identity, little El Salvador FC play outside of FFA restrictions in the church leagues, while Olympic FC play in the top tier of the National Premier Leagues Queensland, where ‘foreign’ and ‘ethnic’ names are not allowed. Welcome to the disjointed, confusing but loveable world of football below the A-League.

I arrive early to meet John ‘Polly’ Polichronis and Olympic FC President Peter Ioannidis in anticipation of Olympic’s FFA Cup clash against Melbourne Knights. Polichronis is setting out chairs in the clubhouse, and he’s part of the furniture around here having helped establish the club in 1967.

Founded as Pan Rhodians, the club can trace their lineage all the way back to Rhodes, a small island closer to Turkey than the Greek mainland in the Aegean Sea. Both Ioannidis’s parents were born in Rhodes, while Polichronis’s father arrived in Australia from Rhodes in 1925. “I’m dinki-di Aussie,” he says with a grin. “I meet mates and friends and people from other clubs here. Having been given great opportunities here to study and to go on and get a good job I thought I’d give something back, you know. I’ve been part of the Greek community, I’ve been part of the nursing home, I’ve been part of this: there’s a whole community structure. It’s part of the life of Queensland.” His grandkids now play in the juniors, almost half a century after he played full-back for the club in the ninth division of the Queensland Soccer Association.

Indeed from ‘the island of the knights’ to the FFA Cup, it’s been a long journey to the national stage for this quietly ambitious club. Polichronis can remember when there was just one team, but Olympic FC has now grown to house just over 900 registered players. “This is the biggest game in our history,” explains Ioannidis, who was one of the first juniors to join the club back in 1980. “We can boast that we are the first Queensland side to play at home and to qualify for the final 32 of the FFA Cup.

“Our main goal is to produce as many juniors as we can. We’ve got some really good talent and we’ve said to our coaches that in five years we want at least 50% of the players in our senior team to be homegrown talent. It’d be nice to say ‘we bred these kids and they’re ours’.”

One of Olympic FC’s longest serving presidents, Polichronis is happy with the direction the club has taken under Ioannadis. “We changed from about 2003 onwards” he says. “We tried to become more professional and more involved with the community. It was more of a Greek club back before that. We stemmed from Hellenic and Pan Rhodians, and we keep the roots and we keep the history. You wouldn’t expect Manchester United or Arsenal or Newcastle to throw away their history.”

But while Olympic FC are determined to prove they are a broad-based, non-ethnic club, their opponents Melbourne Knights are more militant about their identity in the face of continued pressure from FFA. Their days as National Soccer League powerhouses means their reputation proceeds them, and you can hear them arrive, banging on drums and chanting for ‘CRO-A-ZIA’ as mystified officials usher them through the gate into the ground.

Using the controversial National Club Identity Policy – which bars clubs from having any ethnic or foreign signifiers – FFA prevented Melbourne Knights from being sponsored by Melbourne Croatia Soccer Club, and so the team run onto the field without a shirtfront sponsor. The decision has angered the Croatian community and sent ripples around the competition. A complaint has been made to the Human Rights Commission, and don’t be surprised if this issue ends up before the courts.

The question of ethnicity, of course, is never far from state league football. “To get ‘Olympic’ back then we did a lot of work” explains Polichronis. “They didn’t want us to have that name, they wanted to get rid of all the ethnic names. But it’s not an ethnic name, it’s an international name. But who knows what the Football Federation of Australia will want in the long run, if we go into a B-League or anything.”

As the crowd continues to file in, I walk up to the canteen, where they are selling cevapi rolls, souvlaki and kebabs. I eat a kebab in honour of the home team, and as there are no Croatian beers at the bar, I order a XXXX Gold. It’s piss, but it’s $3 cheaper than the Heineken, so it’ll do. I find a spot to sit on the concrete steps behind the perimeter fence with my old man, who grew up playing for a local club, Souths United, not far from these parts. He remembers football in Brisbane through his own father, who took him to see local clubs named Azzuri, or CoalStars, or Polonia, or Hollandia. For us, this match intertwines place, kinship, history and memory.

History and kinship is what makes these state league clubs special and unique, and it is what gives the FFA Cup its so-called ‘magic’. When the Melbourne Knights fans touched down in Brisbane earlier in the day, their first port of call was the Croatian Community Centre in Rocklea. Croatian-Australians from all over join the traveling supporters group, and they fill the far end of the small grandstand and chant “Brisbane Croatia”, “Gold Coast Croatia”, “Melbourne Croatia” interchangably before singing “Croatia United will never be defeated.” In this context, FFA’s ban on the Knights planned sponsor seems petty, mean-spirited and ultimately pointless.

The 200-odd contingent of Melbourne Knights fans get louder as the game kicks off. “You can stick your A-League up your arse,” is about as juvenile as it is entertaining, and the Brisbane Roar players in attendance – Matt Smith, Kofi Danning, Luke Brattan and Jack Hingert – sit with big grins on their faces. Meanwhile the home fans giggle nervously and hold aloft their red and white homemade ‘Go Olympic’ signs.

The match is off to a fast start, with tackles flying in from all directions. The No11 for Melbourne Knights, Jordan O’Doherty, is 16 years old, 5ft 4in, spirited and willing. He launches into tackles against men twice his size, and the visiting fans roar their approval. Unsurprisingly, he’s yellow carded before the first half is out. Olympic’s chunky, bucket-arsed winger Reuben Way is quick and looks dangerous early on, and his friends yell “give us a wave Reuben!” from behind the perimeter fencing, which he dutifully ignores.

Olympic FC fans show their support. Photograph: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images Photograph: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images

Truth be told, the quality is lacking as every well-weighted pass or nice turn is carefully balanced out by a scuffed shot or wayward cross or heavy touch under no pressure. The pitch is bumpy in patches, but in fairness it was completely underwater during the 2011 Brisbane floods, and took months to be brought back up to standard. Floods seem to follow Olympic – their old ground at Dutton Park was similarly drenched when the banks of the Brisbane River broke in 1974. Polichronis holds his hand halfway up to the glass doors in the clubhouse to indicate the water levels in 2011, while Ioannidis marvels at the spirit of the local community who helped repair the place.

Olympic score first, a clinical swivel and shot from young Jacob McLean, and then he scores again on 25 minutes from a tight angle. It brings the house down, but as the hubbub dies the Knights fans grow louder still. Chants of “we’ve got flares, we’ve got flares, we’ve got flares” draw the attention of some worried looking security guards, but they’re woefully outnumbered and unsure how to react to the situation. This is a little more confusing than a Saturday night breaking up fist-fights in The Valley.

The Knights start to play some better football after half time and claw their way back into the game. When O’Doherty buries a low drive into the back of the net on 52 minutes, momentum shifts to the visiting team.

But that momentum is lost as quickly as it was gained as O’Doherty receives a second yellow card. The wind is taken out of the visitors, and Olympic hit the post before Mustafa Jafari scores the final goal of the game to seal the win for the home side. The Melbourne Knights fans bang on the corrugated iron stadium walls in frustration while Jafari waddles away to celebrate and the home fans erupt.

It’s a good night to be Greek or a Queenslander. In Melbourne, the Greek-backed South Springvale defeat South Cardiff on penalties, while Sydney Olympic trounce Manly United 3-1 at Cromer Park. Brisbane Strikers defeat Broadmeadow Magic 2-1 in extra time in Newcastle, and the first Tuesday of the FFA Cup is over without a hitch.