For two intoxicating seasons, Western Sydney Wanderers was the best sport story going around in Australia and everyone wanted in on a slice of the action.

Hacks from rival football codes attended matches at Pirtek Stadium then waxed lyrical about their Damascus road-style conversion to the world game as they scribbled furiously for a column inch of the attention.

Rusted on cynics sat among the Red and Black Bloc and debunked their own perpetuated myths about football fans, as Sydney media's love affair with the A-League took on a red and black hue.

Wanderland pulsed with the refrains of enchanted fans as emboldened players became superstars. Some of them, like marquee Shinji Ono, were bona fide superstars.

The football community welcomed the attention with cautious optimism as the domestic game - more often than not a labour of love in this country - burst onto the mainstream like a Tim Cahill volleyed World Cup goal.

Through it all the Wanderers kept winning. In fact, as Les Murray recently pointed out, in their first two seasons, the Wanderers were the most consistent winning team in the A-League.

As any Sydney Swans or NSW Waratahs fan will tell you, there is no better way to capture the attention of the fickle Sydney sport market than by winning. Unlike Australia's other capital cities, Sydney loves a winner but it won't bleed for its losers. It just won't turn up.

This season the wins stopped and so did Sydney's love affair with the Wanderers.

As Tony Popovic's team labored to its worst finish in three years – ninth, with four wins from 27 matches - the fans voted with their feet. The Wanderers posted their lowest average attendance since entering the competition, 12,520. The A-League suffered, reflecting it's worst average gate since season 2011-2012 - the year prior to the debut of the Wanderers.

Mainstream news outlets became more concerned with what those supporters turning up may or may not have been sparking up and hurling from the stands than what was happening on the pitch, as the fickle nature of Sydney's sporting landscape reared its ugly head.

As fans came to terms with the abrupt end to the fairytale, off the back of a gruelling second season that reached its zenith with the Wanderers' historic AFC Champions League triumph, the competition appeared to lose some of its lustre.

During the past three years the Wanderers have attracted the largest 'away' crowds, with and average of 15,642 watching Popa's boys. They have become a team to love and a team to loathe.

As the Wanderers' fortunes took a dive on the pitch this year, was the A-League deprived of one of its star protagonists, thereby denying the competition one of its marquee drawcards?

Lyall Gorman, the inaugural executive chairman of the Wanderers during the club's existence under FFA rule, acknowledged that success on the field played a significant role in its rise to popularity but asserted the club had set out to avoid relying solely on results to engage its fans.

"It would undermine the [region's] heritage, that had been there, to say it is just about winning," Gorman said. "These are football-loving people who get the game, who celebrate the game and who are proud of their game and their club no matter what.

"We did seven forums across the Sydney region when we started and one of the things I wanted to get from those various participants was what success looked like to them, not to me. As you know you can't win grand finals every year.

"Our fans told us very clearly that the job was to stand up for the west, to be competitive, to make them proud, have a crack never die wondering, never let them down and stay true to our values.

"That removed some pressures from just winning on the field.

"I think one of the fundamental differences between really successful sporting clubs and those who aren't is that they have this emotional connectivity with their fan base. Just winning games isn't the enduring measure of the partnership.

"Having said that I have little doubt success aids and abets that process."

When asked whether the media jumped on the bandwagon due to the Wanderers' success, Gorman replied: "Yes, but we also had some very unique personalities and characters.

"The club represented the hearts and minds and souls of over 2.5 million people in western Sydney it's a very logical market for networks like Seven and Nine to want to reach out to as well."

There is little doubt the difference between the Wanderers' winning and losing has had an impact on the popularity of the A-League this season, a trend acknowledged by Gorman, who stressed the league lives and dies by the fortunes of its biggest clubs.

"I think a strong Wanderers has certainly been a turbo charge for significant increase for the metrics of the A-League since they came into the competition," Lyall Gorman.

"I used to say prior to them that I felt the league also needed a strong Sydney FC and a strong Melbourne Victory. Those core large population markets that are attractive to broadcasters and corporate partners need to be strong and vibrant," he said.

But Gorman was quick to differentiate between engaged fans and hype, recounting the club's rise to popularity in its first year.

"The first five matches there was a 0-0 against the Mariners in Round 1 then the next four games they didn't score a goal or win a game," he recalled.

"The coach and I said 'listen we can see the fundamental building blocks happening here and when it does we'll really give it to someone'. We gave it to Adelaide 6-1 in Round 6.

"For those first five rounds the crowds came and the memberships were surging, there wasn't even a goal scored let alone a win."

The message is two-fold: the Wanderers don't need to be winning to have the hearts and minds of their supporters represented and engaged but a strong Wanderers is required to thrust the A-League into the mindset of a fickle sporting market, just as willing to ditch as a loser as it is to embrace a winner.