Sitting amongst the throng which jam-packed Parramatta for the elimination final, marvelling in the passion, excitement and tribalism of the big occasion, you couldn't help but make the comparison. The football community in this country has had to learn the hard way to take nothing for granted, but it's difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the Wanderers failing from here. The west has finally been won.

So what's next? Standing still in professional sport is not an option. It's even less of an option in Sydney, where there are now 20 professional teams across a broad spectrum of sports. Football has a strategic advantage – its enormous participation base. What Sydney FC (partly through the acquisition of Alessandro del Piero) and the Wanderers have shown is that the A-League is now getting it right at the pointy end.

That both Sunday newspapers led their sections with Saturday night's match at Parramatta suggests a fundamental shift has occurred. The business of football, in Sydney, has never been in better shape. Which makes this the right time to be bold.

Expansion of the A-League is an absolute necessity. It's simply a question of when and where. The push is on from head office to explore the potential of a second Brisbane team based in the Ipswich-Logan corridor. Fair enough. Elsewhere, the usual culprits – North Queensland, Canberra, Auckland and Wollongong – are being canvassed without the FFA imprimatur.

What doesn't get much airplay is a third Sydney team, even though this was always an option if the Australian Premier League model had been used to set up the A-League, rather than John O'Neill's ‘‘one city, one team’’ approach. It's time to reopen the discussion.