How would last year's beaten grand finalists Sydney fare in The Championship or would League One or Two be more their level? TV pundits who have made their name overseas will make comparisons sometimes, but the difficulty there can lie in the distance. Many shone in foreign competitions and had a real understanding of the difference in levels when they were playing but that was a decade or more ago in some cases. A measure of how difficult it is can be seen by the fact that even in this country there are plenty prepared to still argue about the relative merits of the A-League against the old National Soccer League. The A-League is played in better stadia, has better media and broadcast deals and attracts bigger crowds than its predecessor. But advocates for the latter point out that the NSL developed genuine stars like Mark Viduka, Paul Okon, Ned Zelic, Mark Schwarzer and Brett Emerton, all of whom established themselves domestically first before becoming big names on their travels.

Still, it's not the job of this column to be daunted by such trifles, so I decided to try and benchmark the local league against the four league divisions in England while on a recent trip there. For reasons of accuracy, I of course had to take in a Premiership match - my team, Tottenham, at home to Stoke - to set the standard. I also sampled the delights of Selhurst Park, where I saw Mile Jedinak come off the bench in the last 12 minutes as Crystal Palace saw off a stubborn Aston Villa 2-1. While an A-League side might have a flukers' chance against a top team in a Cup tie - upsets happen often enough in England when leading clubs send out weaker squads or just take their eye off the ball - it would be unlikely. Now I didn't actually see a Championship fixture, but I did see a Championship club - Fulham - in action the week before the season started against Palace in a friendly. Fulham played well but were always chasing it in the second half against Palace in a 1-1 draw. Would Victory be able to give them a game? On what I saw at Craven Cottage, yes, certainly in a one-off fixture.

But over the course of a marathon season it might be a different matter. Australian clubs are simply not used to competing for 10 months, playing twice a week in a gruelling and demanding environment. The A-League can look more technical, but the pace of the game, as played by most teams, is much slower, allowing players to look better. It was a different matter when I dropped down the divisions though. Millwall v Barnet in a League Cup tie in August on a Tuesday night hardly sets the pulses racing, but it was an entertaining enough battle in which the League One Lions were undone by the League Two Bees (newly promoted from the Conference) in their own backyard at the New Den. How would an A-League side fare against a League One side? My feeling is that the top ones would certainly do pretty well - again, if they could get the fitness and mental strength required to back up twice a week for nearly 10 months. With 46 league matches, plus three Cup competitions, it's a busy life for a lower league player in England. Aside from some promising youngsters, it's fair to say that most League One clubs do not have players of the pedigree of Victory's Fahid Ben Khalfallah or Matthieu Delpierre, Melbourne City's Robert Koren or Sydney's 2014-15 marquee man Marc Janko, who is currently leading Austria to the European Championships.

One of the great things about the British game is its depth. So it was with interest that I travelled to Mansfield on the opening day of the season to see them play Carlisle United in a League Two fixture. It's hardly a glamorous location - a town in what used to be a mining area between Nottingham and Sheffield - and in truth it was hardly a glamorous game in front of some 3800 fans, a crowd swelled by 700 travelling Cumbrians who had made the long journey south from England's most north-westerly outpost, Carlisle. There was lots of hustle and bustle, a good atmosphere, lots of effort, but not a lot of finesse. Both sides were physically strong, but too often the preferred method of attack was the long ball, over-hit into the channels. Too few passes hit the target, an aerial approach was favoured and I went away sure that the leading A-League teams had the ability to see both of these teams off - notwithstanding Carlisle's heroics against Liverpool in the League Cup this week when they took the Merseysiders to extra time and penalties at Anfield before being eliminated.