KEY POINTS:
Given the skeletons rattling around in the cupboards of New Zealand's previous forays on to the professional soccer stage in Australia, yesterday's much-anticipated granting of the A-League licence to New Zealand Soccer must be seen as the first step in a new era rather than the end of
protracted efforts to keep the game afloat in this country.
If this latest ambitious and now successful bid fails for any reason it will, justifiably, be the end of the line.
The patience of Football Federation Australia has been tested but to its credit, it has remained loyal to the Shaky Isles and given New Zealand Soccer, and the Wellington bidders (as sub-licensees), a last chance.
Any repeat of the embarrassing gaffes that left the Auckland-based Football Kingz and New Zealand Knights red-faced will not be tolerated, and nor should it.
The failure to pay players is unacceptable and reason enough, surely, for any licence to be revoked.
Octagon Sports, as the Knights licensee, was out of its depth and struggled to recognise the demands of professional sport. Its ineptness has now cost New Zealand's biggest city the chance to embrace a team in a meaningful soccer competition.
That, in the long term, might not be a bad thing.
Shocking calls in recruiting staff, both players and in the front office, underlined its lack of understanding of what was needed to make a New Zealand team competitive in a championship destined to revolutionise the game on both sides of the Tasman.
Well-beaten in both seasons, apart from the Ricki Herbert-led flurry at the back end of season two, a New Zealand franchise had no grounds to plead for another chance, especially after the FFA had stepped in to pay the players and get them through to the end of the season.
While many will point to the benefits a New Zealand team brings to the Hyundai A-League and the four million potential television viewers as reasons for the FFA to throw its weight behind a franchise here, that alone was not enough to earn another throw of the dice.
In the end - with Townsville-based Tropical Football withdrawing its bid - the FFA had little option but to give Wellington property investor Terry Serepisos the big tick.
Again, that is only the start.
Serepisos should be lauded for the last-minute call he made.
Money alone will not guarantee success. But it is the beginning, as is the call to hand Herbert the reins on a three-year deal.
Quickly putting the right administrative and back-up coaching structure in place and the players to succeed is vital.
New Zealand Soccer, with whom, after all, the buck stops, will be determined there is no repeat of what has gone before. It can't afford to let that happen.
Serepisos, New Zealand Soccer and Herbert have been handed a mandate.
The game as a whole will now hold collective breaths and hope, like the Warriors, that one day soon they can turn such promise into a place in the Grand Final.
The FFA's optimism and hope would then be fully warranted.
