YOU slogged your way through the winter. Paid your dues in the outer. Suffered the ups and downs of a season when your team sucked more often than a petrol siphoner during an oil embargo.
And now the sun is on your back, the last of the Mad Monday outfits have been tucked back into girlfriends' wardrobes and it's time for … football season.
Rep season, anyway.
It started with the Socceroos on Wednesday night. Which did not quite seem so unseasonable because, somehow, Australia has made what was formerly soccer a summer game and because, around the globe, the code has long crashed through the boundaries once imposed by the calendar.
So, as one of those fortunate 25 percent-ish of viewers with pay television who could watch the game, I would like to make the following declaration: Australia's move into the Asian qualifying group is a blinding success - and not just because the Socceroos made Qatar gently weep. (Yes, I know the Gulf nation is really pronounced ka-tar. But we can resist a bad pun here about as well as Josh Kennedy can resist a high ball into the box.)
The original rationale for moving to Asia was it was to make Australia's World Cup qualification more straightforward - although possibly not so straightforward as the Qatari goalkeeper tried to make it. An added benefit is that, even if they were to fail to make it to South Africa, the game will have enjoyed a solid 18 months of major - if not, for lack of free-to-air coverage, mass - exposure.
You suspect the Rugby League World Cup organisers will settle for a month if the media does not poke too much fun at the Ireland-Tonga match. We are not going to start here.
Since attending the Kangaroos-Great Britain Test at Wembley in 1990, I've been a big fan of representative league. Admittedly, that was partly because the raucous lads from Wigan and Huddersfield with whom we downed post-match pints were much better company than the snarling Rottweilers who once ruled the terraces at Premier League games.
The perverse secret to international league's success is that Australia must assemble a first-class line-up, run out with the expectation it will dazzle and humiliate overwhelmed opponents - and then lose. Because, only by losing, can the Kangaroos claim their subsequent triumphs are worthwhile.
In 1990, that scenario played out perfectly. The Australians lost the first Test at Wembley unexpectedly before rallying to win the last two, thus making the rather mundane task of trouncing the old enemy seem like a bravura performance.
The other obvious problem with representative rugby league is the stronger other domestic competitions get, the greater the threat they poses to the game here as cashed-up foreign clubs lure Australian stars. So do you want a fair dinkum World Cup between a bunch of strong nations? Or do you want the NRL to maintain its place at the predominant club competition?
Either way, the best thing that can happen for the promoters is an English victory over Australia in the pool match in Melbourne early next month followed by a rematch in the finals. With Cam Smith keeping the English out in the dying seconds with a grapple tackle. Still hate him?
The best thing that can happen for the AFL in its bizarre "international rules" series against Ireland is that none of the Irish postmen and butchers, who have taken leave from their days jobs, are killed or maimed. That way the Irish won't cancel the series as they did after the Australians played rough in Ireland two years ago, something that would be a disaster - at least for those AFL officials eager to spread the word about their great game throughout the Emerald Isle's many outstanding pubs and golf courses.
If it is hard to take the game of "international rules" seriously, it is because it is not a game at all. It is a forced attempt to provide international competition for the stars of two games that thrive because of their unique, parochial nature.
Officials, players and even reporters who return from these series having worn green and gold and bellowed the national anthem in victory for the first time become zealots to the cause. But then, players who return arm in arm from end of season trips to Bali tend to develop similar camaraderie.
Big crowds will attend the two matches in Perth and Melbourne. That is hardly a ringing endorsement of the concept. You could stitch the laces on some new Sherrins in the centre circle at the MCG and 50,000 diseased Melburnians would turn up to watch.
After all, it is football season.
rhinds@smh.com.au