KEY POINTS:
We were in a franchise eatery, talking franchises as it turned out.
A check of the files tells me it was 1999 - can it really be that long ago?
A New Zealand soccer team was on the verge of entering the Australian soccer league although without the
fanfare which accompanied league's Warriors.
Chris Turner, the spearhead and majority owner of what became the soccer Kingz, was outlining his vision for the club.
Turner said all the right sort of things that day, except one. I've never forgotten it.
He made it clear that he was already contemplating a time when the operation was so successful he could sell it and make a buck.
Oh no, I thought.
To give Turner his due, he got the Kingz up and rolling. And it would be unfair to say that self-interest has caused the failure of the Kingz-turned-Knights soccer club, which looks a nod away from disappearing for good.
There is a certain amount of selfishness in most successful ventures. Inept management and players have been at the centre of the problem.
But where is the die-for-the-cause passion which takes a club to the great places, and through the tough times? To borrow the famous line, how many people involved with the Kingz/Knights have asked not what the club can do for them, but what they can do for the club. Why does New Zealand Soccer seem so ambivalent?
Because even in the highest echelons of the game, where individual players earn enough in two months to buy the Knights a future forever, passion sits at the heart of a successful business.
Heart and soul has been missing from our only professional soccer club and nobody in important places seems to give a damn if it disappears.
Soccer needs a clever desperado out there rattling cages 24 hours a day. Graham Seatter, the NZS head, always appears so nine to five-ish.
The only person who has emerged with any credit of late is Ricki Herbert, who as an eleventh hour coach inspired a miraculous rescue act last year.
For soccer to rise above the low-profile contests involving Central, Waitakere and the rest, membership of the A-League was the only way forward.
The A-League is booming in Australia. Imagine the buzz it would create for soccer here if a New Zealand club could challenge for the title.
There is so much potential for soccer in this country, and the domestic club scene is not within cooee of fulfilling that promise.
If New Zealand soccer cannot cling to its place on the bus now, it will be left on the side of the road for years - perhaps forever.
