The Canberra bid team, along with 14 other contenders, lodged its expression of interest on Thursday.

While the ACT's last attempt to establish a top flight soccer team proved unsuccessful a decade ago much has changed. Canberra's legitimate claims for a spot in the most prestigious round ball competition in the country have reached the point where they can no longer be brushed aside.

That is effectively what happened to the highly professional bid launched by then TransACT CEO, Ivan Slavich, in 2007-2008.

While Mr Slavich's A-League4Canberra bid was successful in getting the FFA to agree to extend the deadline for bids to 2008, and went on to source more than $5 million in pledges of corporate and government sponsorship and support, the association gave his efforts the cold shoulder.

Apparently concerned about the population issue, it snubbed the local bid in order to establish yet another Sydney-based club, the Western Sydney Wanderers.

That has left Canberra as possibly the only capital city of a major soccer playing nation that does not have its own top-level team contesting the national competition.

That's hardly good enough given this city has repeatedly shown it has the interest, the player base and the level of community support necessary to support an A-League team.

Young Canberra players have regularly transitioned to A-League teams elsewhere with considerable success and, on March 5, 2009, at the height of the A-League4Canberra bid, more than 20,000 fans attended a soccer match at Canberra Stadium.

That was the Asian Cup qualification round between the Socceroos and Kuwait. While attendance at a subsequent A-league match proved less than satisfactory, the point remains that Canberrans showed they would turn out in droves if they could be sure of a worthy clash.

While the FFA may have been within its rights to be concerned about the size of our population base a decade ago there is no cause for worry today.

Canberra has, over the past decade, established itself as one of the fastest growing and most livable regional cities in the country.

Our local soccer competitions are as healthy as they have ever been and thousands of youngsters turn out to "bend it like Beckham" every weekend during the season.

We recently reported that around 15,000 boys and girls, aged between five and 17, were registered to play soccer in the Territory.

These youngsters are the real reasons why the inclusion of an ACT team in the FAA's A-league competition is so important. Every kid, regardless of the code they follow, dreams of pulling on their boots for their home team one day.

That is an ambition young Canberra Rugby Union players can pursue thanks to the Brumbies and that our future stars of the NRL can pursue through the Canberra Raiders.

Given the high level of interest in soccer in this community, the time has come for young supporters of the code to be given the opportunity of pursuing the same dreams.