Leading the way: Dunbar Rovers. But football is the game of the people, never the domain of the rich, and to prosper as a nation we need every skerrick of talent we can find. The Socceroos are scouring the planet for anyone with an Australian connection, yet we're excluding tens of thousands of talents every day because a growing number seek only to profit from the game. It has to change. The profiteering on our kids is becoming endemic, and it's disgusting. But there's a ray of light on the horizon and it's getting brighter. It's called Dunbar Rovers FC. Dunbar, god love them, are the first club in an NPL environment, to my knowledge, providing free football for elite youth players. Yes, free. Nada. Nix. The big zero.

And they could change the very fabric of the game. Formed 25 years ago in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, Dunbar has grown into a multiculturally diverse and inclusive club with a passionate group of idealists willing to challenge the status quo. So how do they do it, when others are quick to say it cannot be achieved? Firstly, they achieved promotion last year to NPL3 and won the club championship without paying their first grade players a cent. This means they don't need to milk the kids to pay the first team's wages, the scourge of the game, alleviating a heavy load before they begin. The club treats its players extremely well though, providing services in lieu of cash, such as career planning and education, and networking events using the contact network of the club to facilitate the career prospects outside football for its own.

Secondly, to pay for the rest of the kids, they actively encourage participation by their club community with their sponsors and the club hierarchy spend immense time and energy building these linkages to become a valuable port of call for business in the east. In short, aside from the mechanisms the club uses, they work their butts off night and day to provide the best environment possible in the old way, by not taking money simply because you can, by providing football for kids not based on the size of their folks' wallet, and by dreaming that we can be better. When many of us were starting in the game, the culture was different. Adults worked in the game, for the kids: Working bees to build clubs and facilities, volunteering to save the club costs, fundraising left, right and centre so that we could play for the minimum, possible amount. Too often, today the adults see the kids as profit centres. We need to be very careful of not following the path of profiteering from the grassroots, because the game will be the loser. Many say it can't be done, but it takes pioneers to strike out in search of something better and more noble, and Dunbar Rovers have made this important leap of faith.

For this reason, like any dreamers in football looking to promote and further our game, they have my full support. I hope, for the sake of the game, they can count on yours.