In retrospect, we should have seen it coming. But when Clive Palmer was awarded an A-League license back in 2008 he wasn't the way he is now. When he said he would move football in Australia forward, we believed he would do it. He was meant to be Australia's answer to Roman Abramovich. He promised to pump his mining billions into Gold Coast United and set new standards for Australian football. He was quirky, yes, but nothing more – there were no dinosaur parks, no replicas of the Titanic. Not yet.

What could have been. Two years on from the death of Gold Coast United and few would look back on Palmer's three-season rollercoaster in the A-League with any wistfulness. A club born with a silver spoon in its mouth, United suffered an undignified end. In their final days, they trained in borrowed Socceroos gear provided by FFA because their banished owner had control of their regular kit. With a squad that became casualties of the war between Palmer and the FFA, the stench of doom – which had lingered, essentially, since day dot – was inescapable.

In hindsight, rushing in the Western Sydney Wanderers – then only known as 'New Sydney Club' – was the right option. Even Geoffrey Schuhkraft, the man who wanted to clean up the mess and save GCU at the 11th hour, can admit to that now. The A-League is no longer exposed to ridicule through embarrassing Skilled Park crowds and for once, there is a sense of stability off the field. Western Sydney has been a runaway success – although, as Football Gold Coast general manager Damien Bresic says, "If the federal government gave us $8m, I'm sure we would have done the same thing."

People are understandably bitter, as they are up in Townsville, and even more so after seeing the Wanderers treated with a degree of love and care that wasn't there in the first wave of A-League expansion. "No, it hasn't recovered fully. But it's on its way to recovery," said Peter Williamson, chairman of the region's only National Premier Leagues side, Palm Beach.

David Gallop and Frank Lowy won't acknowledge it publicly, but expansion is looming as one of the A-League's biggest issues. The 10-team format is growing stale. More clubs are needed to not only maximise FFA's next TV rights deal, but to ensure the competition itself advances. While consolidation is important, so is planning now to avoid a repeat of the blunders that were made in the past.

There aren't exactly a multitude of options. Though FFA has all but turned its back on the Gold Coast, it remains the biggest sporting market from which the A-League is absent. Projections show the area’s population will swell to nearly 750,000 by 2026. And while it has long been regarded as a sporting graveyard and irrelevant in football terms, that could be about to change. Four years from now the Gold Coast will host the Commonwealth Games. For a regional city still grasping its own sense of self, that is a big deal. Schuhkraft and the 'Save GCU' movement he once led are banking on this event galvanising the Gold Coast's sporting culture and providing an environment in which an A-League franchise will be viable.

"Two years on, I'm more enthusiastic about this than ever," said Schuhkraft, founder of talent empire International Quarterback and a veteran of the sporting management scene. In 2006 he joined forces with former client and current Milan coach Clarence Seedorf to create ON International - a company focused on "changing the way the business of football is played". His passion project is to help the Gold Coast finally embrace the round ball. Just returned from a trip to the Middle East with Gold Coast mayor Tom Tate, he's making a good start. Tate was one of the businessmen involved in Schuhkraft's unsuccessful bid to keep United alive. He was elected mayor shortly afterwards and has since employed Schuhkraft as a senior advisor for Middle East relations for the Gold Coast City Council.

Schuhkraft has friends in high places. He introduced Tate to the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, who now get along famously, going skydiving together during Tate's recent self-funded trip to the United Arab Emirates. The Gold Coast and Dubai are sister cities and that relationship has helped open a lot of doors. It helped Schuhkraft convince the UAE national team to hold their pre-Asian Cup training camp on the Gold Coast later this year. He says that deal will give the city two weeks of saturation media coverage in the football-mad UAE. Qatar would be coming, too, if they weren't drawn in the same group.

Schuhkraft helped to secure two other deals - the first a "knowledge-sharing" agreement with Qatar 2022's Supreme Committee of Legacy and Delivery, the second with Qatar's Olympic Committee. "There's a lot of areas of collaboration and ways we can utilise the fact we're both regions preparing for global sporting events," Schuhkraft said.

The Gold Coast City Council is not concerning itself with the controversy surrounding Qatar's procurement of the rights to host the 2022 World Cup – and the treatment of migrant workers. "We obviously are aware of a lot of the conversation around the World Cup but we are a city preparing for the Commonwealth Games. They are a country that's been granted the World Cup. We believe it's in the best interests of both parties that we embrace this opportunity and take a positive approach, because that's how we'll make positive change within Qatar and also our community.

"The reason why we've been able to secure such extraordinary outcomes for the city is because of the way they view the Gold Coast. They don't view it like any other market within Australia. To people from the Middle East and China, it is a safe destination, a destination they love. These are substantial agreements that any state or city would be honoured to be able to achieve. Right at the centre of them all is football. We're planting the seeds and I'm really quite excited about that."

Tate and Schuhkraft devised a plan last year to float the idea of an A-League franchise to Chinese investors under the working title of "Gold Coast Dragons", with the hope of building into the top tier through the National Premier Leagues in Queensland. That idea has developed into the motivation for the work that Schuhkraft is doing today. The council is also on board, and is set to engage a consultant specifically to help them develop a strategy for football and how the city can use it as a platform to do more business abroad.

"I honestly do believe there is a great future for football on the Gold Coast and the fact that we've been made to sit back, take stock and consider every aspect has been a very healthy process for everyone," he said. "Since the license was taken off Palmer it definitely hasn't dropped off the radar. All the key movers and shakers around sports strategy in the city, the Commonwealth Games and beyond, have all made sure that football is at the pointy end of the sword."

"Football is the biggest participation sport here. It is the most powerful sporting and entertainment package on the planet. The problem is it's never been organised into any sort of structure where we can build unity and passion around a club. We have to prove that we can deliver a minimum of 10,000 per game and that we have the people with the passion and a stadium that can offer prices and an entertainment package that would justify the reason for those people to attend. It all starts at the grassroots."

Schuhkraft sure talks a big game but is the potential he speaks of even there anymore? The grassroots tell the tale. The local zone still has close to 10,000 registered players while there are an additional 3,000 based in northern NSW. That's an enormous catchment area. Most in the game agree it has never been harnessed correctly.

Football has a long history on the tourist strip but not a particularly strong one. It never had a side in the National Soccer League, nor was it ever really in the national soccer conversation. "When you look at some of these soccer clubs on the Gold Coast, they're exactly the same as they have been for the last 30 years," Williamson said. "They might have tidied up their toilet block and clubhouse and put up a small grandstand even, but that's it. We're one of only two soccer clubs with a licensed club premises, which is where we get our money from. There's been no vision. The Gold Coast has got so much going for it; it's unbelievable. People aren't exploiting what we've got here." With that background an A-League licence was always going to be a quantum leap, and had to be done right for it to work. It wasn't.

"I remember putting together a community engagement proposal and taking it to them and saying, 'you really need to get on board, we've got so many players'… they just weren't interested," said Bresic. Palmer's parting gift was a two-year sponsorship worth $50,000 from his company Minerology for the naming rights of the local competition.



"Unfortunately, the Palmer experience was an abject failure. But it was destined to fail," Williamson said. "Football is a blue-collar sport. To tell everybody you're going to be flying around in private jets, it created a lot of resentment from all the local people in football. Had Clive hung in there longer and didn't and get some people offside, he would have got it right eventually. There is a lot of support for football here but it's got to be done properly and gradually. Fortunately all the groundwork that Clive should have done is being done now in the NPL."

Palm Beach won the coast's only NPL license virtually unopposed. The only other bid came from FGC, which proposed a broader entity that was to pick up where United left off, like the Northern Fury. But an FFA directive that zones were to be excluded from the elite development pathway meant that it was never seriously considered. "That really made it Palm Beach, and Palm Beach alone," said Football Queensland chief operating officer Ben Mannion.

As it stands, the job is too big for one club – especially since nearly a quarter of Palm Beach's players come from northern NSW. FGC and FQ both want a second NPL team in the Gold Coast's north to lighten the load. "When you get past Nerang-Broadbeach Road, you're probably not going to come south to train at NPL level. A lot of kids have actually come up to Brisbane Strikers because of that," said Mannion. "Just based on the numbers, there's something missing." Three local clubs – Coomera, Magic United and Mudgereeba – have already shown interest in filling the void.

"That's when you'll see football on the Gold Coast go from strength to strength. Then your A-League club goes on top," Williamson said. "That's where we deserve to be. The players, the potential, most of the infrastructure is here. We just need a vision. The thing that's let us down is that people didn't have the vision 25 years ago. The ones that did were clocked on the head by people who couldn't manage change."

With Schuhkraft working from the top down and the NPL slowly building from the bottom up, the challenge is making both movements align. As Bresic says, "Let's make sure we build a garage before we go and buy a Ferrari to put in it." Last week, Schuhkraft met with FGC for the first time to discuss the state of play. Palm Beach are ready to help in whatever way possible. It would be a stretch to say there is a consortium in place, but perhaps for the first time in Gold Coast football history, all the game's main stakeholders are on the same page.

"I don't give in, I don't give up, and until we've got an A-League franchise here, I won't be giving up," Schuhkraft said. "We have all the elements. It's now about how well we can execute this over the next five to seven years. That's one of the gifts I'd love to give this city because on the back end of that will be many, many rewards that people might not understand today, but once it's up and running, they'll get it."