What great times these should be for Australian football.

Sam Kerr officially opened the W-League season by doing what she does — scoring a goal when it was most expected.

Kerr's celebratory backflip might not yet have the iconic status of Tim Cahill's corner flag assault and battery, but such is Kerr's capacity to score on demand, surely even greater acclaim is only a World Cup away.

The Matildas will play China in Melbourne and Geelong this month. Lock up your daughters, AFLW acolytes.

On Friday night Melbourne $ity plays Sydney FC in a mouth-watering top of the table clash between the reigning champions and the early season pacesetters.

And no, that was not a typo. Some of us who wore our Melbourne Hearts on our sleeves prefer to spell the new entity with a dollar sign.

This is not a sly backhander aimed at the petro-chemical riches of the Abu Dhabi-based $ity Group. It is an earnest attempt to embrace Melbourne $ity's one true distinction.

Melbourne City — or perhaps $ity — have set the early pace in the A-League. ( AAP: David Crosling )

After all, when you don't have a unique geographical zone, your ultra-successful cross-town rival Victory had a five-year head start recruiting fans and you've become renowned as an empty stadium underachiever, you need to stand for something.

Thus $ity should revel in its inherited wealth, its access to the $ity Groups vast data base of international talent and its fancy training facilities. If it is to increase its average crowds from the usual 8,000 diehards to a more respectable figure, it must show potential converts money can buy happiness.

Meanwhile, the Socceroos prepare for the away leg against Honduras in a bid to compete in the World Cup finals for a fourth consecutive time.

Yes, the World Cup finals! While the football media takes pot shots at coach Ange Postecoglou from a grassy knoll, the team is about to depart for the biggest challenge since the famous Uruguay triumph of 2005.

Postecoglou has brought the attention on himself. He would have been wiser to hold his tongue rather than confide that his future beyond this qualifying stage is uncertain (although not yet decided).

But too easily ignored by those in the media busy composing devilishly clever taunts or playing hurt because Postecoglou no longer appears on their TV programs is the real reason the coach will consider his future should the Socceroos qualify.

Ange Postecoglou and his Socceroos face an almighty challenge against Honduras. ( AAP: Dean Lewins )

Postecoglou has been worn down in spirit, but not performance, by a job that has required a personal commitment beyond that expected of any other national coach.

The Socceroos' Asian Cup winning coach has never had the luxury of just moving witches hats at training. As the game's public figurehead — in the place of the increasingly unpopular chief executive David Gallop and the charisma-free chairman Stephen Lowy — he has been expected to appear at the opening of every FFA envelope.

As recruiting scout he has been forced to travel to Scottish second division games hoping to bolster a mediocre squad. And, in his spare time, he has tried to navigate his team through Asia.

The reward? Little support from the FFA and calls for his sacking from the media when he dared employ a formation that might make the post-golden era Socceroos something more than target practice for their opposition should they get to Russia.

So Postecoglou is now thinking he will take a couple of weeks after qualification to consider his future and weigh up his options? Quelle surprise!

Still, World Cup qualification remains a real possibility even as the Hondurans contrive to play the first leg in conditions so hot the Socceroos will return to Sydney medium-rare.

Which leaves Australian football with so much reason to be excited that, naturally, the game is tearing itself apart.

Actually, it hasn't even been able to manage that yet. The postponement of this week's scheduled FFA emergency general meeting means the intervention of FIFA's eerily Soviet-sounding ''normalisation committee'' is now a real possibility.

David Gallop and the FFA have problems to address... urgently. ( AAP: Lukas Coch )

You might characterise this as just the latest example of the game's rare ability to shoot itself in the foot.

But — and this might be clutching at a straw that is about be lopped by a Whipper Snipper — the recent political machinations could yet help unlock the game's scandalously underexploited potential.

Before siding with the A-League clubs, the players union and the NSW federation against the FFA's reform proposals, Football Federation Victoria president Kimon Taliadoros did what the FFA seldom does. He listened.

Taliadoros sought a wide range of opinions from the game's various stakeholders and reached the conclusion that, for all the FFA's voluminous long-term plans, a game with endless possibilities has a two-word answer to growth and innovation: ''Not yet.''

Thus the FFV joined those championing a governance model the proponent feels will hold the FFA board to account and, ideally, give the organisations best equipped to energise Australian football a far greater say in how that is done.

The FFA mutters darkly that the states risk empowering self-interested A-League clubs and ''the grass roots will suffer''. But given the game's current stagnation it now seems a risk worth taking.

The threat of change has already forced the FFA to open its eyes to the possibilities of a national second division, just one measure that could, if executed properly, help build a much needed bridge between the game's club/participation base and its elite levels.

Somersaulting Sammy Kerr, the A-League showdown and the Socceroos' World Cup quest are exciting. But, as farfetched as it might seem, the most exhilarating thing for Australian football could yet take place in the board room.