Those three competitions are effectively the best in the world: the AFL by virtue of its uniqueness, the NRL because Australia cares more about Rugby League than do sports fans in England, France or New Zealand, and the BBL because Cricket Australia has achieved a triumph of marketing and content, the perfect competition in the perfect short window of the year.

The A-League will almost certainly never become the top soccer league in the world, not unless the world turns inside out and upside down and some extraordinary Lord of Misrule policy comes into being.

But it is the best soccer competition, or at least the highest level competition, that we have.

Trouble is, it still seems have problems working out what it is supposed to be.

Last week this column touched on the issue of active supporters and fan participation at matches, a subject which drew more responses on social media and more heated discussion than almost any opinion piece I have written in recent times. So I won't go there again so soon afterwards in a discussion of what the A-League's character and identity is, or should be.

Is it a development league? One designed to provide a showcase for the best young talent this country has so that they can prove themselves and gain experience in a professional environment before building successful careers in tougher overseas leagues?

Is it supposed to provide a bolthole for Australians who have tried and failed overseas, players who leave, come back, leave and then get recycled around a number of clubs?

Is it supposed to be a place where famous and successful Australians come back to crown their career, "giving something back to the game" (not a phrase we hear that often now, it must be said) at the end of their careers in major European Leagues.

Is it supposed to be a league where decent foreigners come to earn a big payday knowing they can star at a level far below that which they have been playing at.

Is it supposed to be a league where faded stars, once big names of the game, come here for one last lucrative payout, confident that if they have a glittering CV (achieved a decade and more earlier) they will be ticked off as marquee players by the FFA?

In truth, it has been an amalgam of all of the above.

Anyone who has watched it since its inception can remember disastrous marquee signings, particularly in those early days. Mario Jardel and Brian Deane, anyone? (That said, Marcin Budzinski, the infrequently seen current marquee at Melbourne City, will be joining that illustrious list if he doesn't start to make an impression soon).

Plenty of clubs have used kids and given youth its chance - most notably the Central Coast Mariners under Tony Walmsley, and we all remember how that turned out. Development is great and should be an aim of the league: but young players have to be introduced and nurtured longside experienced players rather than be thrown in at the deep end.

Legion are the journeymen foreigners who turned up with exalted opinions of themselves and their abilities, and failed to impress. For every Adrian Mierzejewski and Leroy George this season, Thomas Broich and Shinji Ono in the past, there have been too many to mention who simply have not delivered enough to justify their spot as a foreigner on the roster, never mind a marquee position.

Whatever it is, the A-League is the best that we have in this country at the moment, but it needs to improve in its recruitment of players, both foreign and domestic.

There are too many recycled journeymen bouncing like pinballs from club to club.

More effort needs to be made in properly scouting visa players: in an ideal world, every one of the five foreigners currently allowed on an A-League club's roster should, barring injury, be a starting eleven player. If not, what's the point of having them: better to cut the number of foreigners allowed by one or two and provide more opportunities for locals. Sydney FC has got it spot on now with its overseas players, but few other clubs can match their recent record.

A-League coaches, in the main, need to show more adventure and take more risks in selecting younger players and, in the absence (at least for now) of a second division, perhaps take more chances with the best talent on offer in each state's NPL competitions.

What have they got to lose from taking a few risks? They can't be relegated, after all, and there is nothing that fans of clubs like to see than new young faces, either players nurtured in their own youth set-up or brought in from elsewhere and given their chance by their club.

Who knows, it might dampen the cynicism that is attaching itself to so much of the sport now and help boost crowds if some of the kids start to make an impact?

The A-League should never be seen as largely a development league, even if that is one of its happy spin-offs. It is the peak competition, and winning it should be an end in itself, particularly as the rewards - entry to the Asian Champions League - are worth having.

The games between Sydney and Newcastle earlier this week, and Melbourne Victory and Newcastle last Friday night showed what the competition here can offer. Now it's up to the other clubs to match the ambition of the big city Victory and Sydney and the innovation and adventure of the Jets and make many more games memorable.

That, more than anything, would be my wish for 2018.