The maturation of Macarthur FC from A-League Men’s expansion-winning bid to global transfer market player has been on full display in 2025, with four players sold to overseas clubs in the January transfer window.

Many in Australian football still cringe at the labelling of our top domestic competition as a development league; the challenge for the Bulls now is to ensure they’ve struck the balance, and kick on towards finals from what is a heavily congested middle bracket of sides on the table.

Jed Drew (Austria), Oliver Jones (Denmark) and Raphael Borges Rodriguez (England) have all headed to traditional football strongholds of Europe and the UK, while academy product Ariath Piol signed with MLS clubs Real Salt Lake after just fourteen senior games, highlighted by an outrageous bicycle-kick goal against Sydney FC.

‘Personally, I’m proud of helping them on their way, and as a club we’re happy with what we’ve done and the way we’ve run our academy. We’ve given players a chance to show themselves, time to settle in and prove themselves – and they’re great examples of what we’ve done’, Bulls manager Mile Sterjovski told Box2Box.

‘As much as it hurts to lose players of their quality, it’s great for the club and the league, and for them individually. Hopefully they continue their careers and are looking to play for the Socceroos one day. They know they can pick up the phone at any time and we’ll offer advice, even though they’re not here anymore.’

An understated member of the Socceroos’ Golden Generation, Sterjovski has been at Macarthur since their inaugural season. After pairing duties as head of their academy and senior assistant from 2020-23, he stepped into the senior role in January 2023 and last September, led them to their second Australia Cup.

While silverware and transfer income have filtered through frequently enough, the same cannot be said of the club’s attendances through its short history.. Covid-19 stymied chances of an early boom akin to what Auckland FC have managed this season, but few could dress their current season average of 3,785 across eight home matches as anything other than disappointing.

‘Obviously we’d like crowds to be much higher. We are working with our communities, we have players visiting schools weekly, but it’s not as easy as people think. First and foremost we try to be successful on the pitch, and I think we’ve shown over the last few seasons we can be very competitive.

‘We’ve won the Australia Cup, played in Asia [in the then-named ACL Cup last season], made the finals… I think we are growing, slowly. It’s heading in the right direction.

‘With the amount of people moving into the area each year, we expect crowds to continue to grow. We’ll continue to work hard to build the club, the team first and foremost, and then everyone else. I’m confident that in future we’ll reach our targets, but it may take a bit of time.’