Now, Suncorp Stadium's loss has turned out to be AAMI Park's – and Melbourne Victory supporters' – gain, as it means the Victory faithful can, after all, pay proper tribute to the club's favourite son, Archie Thompson.

Thompson was due to play his 200th game for Victory in Brisbane last weekend, but the storm clouds that caused that game to be postponed have now enabled him to mark that milestone in front of his own fans in his own home city.

That is as it should be.

If anyone, save for current Victory coach and former captain Kevin Muscat, epitomises Victory, it's Thompson. Them apart, he is the highest-profile figure at Victory, the biggest club in the league.

The personal accolades he has garnered, while important enough – the A-League's Golden Boot award, a Marston Medal for being best on ground in the grand final and two Victory Medals for being the club's player of the year – are in many ways of less significance than the overall contribution he has made to the team over a decade and the club as a whole.

It is his skills, talents, goals and impish sense of humour that have done so much to create the Victory "brand", which has become associated with attacking, free-flowing football and entertainment.

Through the years, Archie has been nothing if not an entertainer.

Having almost been lost to the game through lack of application and commitment – he was, famously, washing dishes in a Bathurst Chinese restaurant when he saw footage of his NSW Institute of Sport teammate Harry Kewell scoring goals in the Premier League and decided to have a real go at making use of his talent – Thompson has worked hard and made the most of what he has to carve a huge niche in the local game.

There have been better footballers and players from the A-League who have achieved more on the international stage but none of them have had the same impact as Thompson. His goals, his ebullience, his sense of humour – occasionally childish – and his sheer exuberance out on the pitch, particularly in his younger days, have been a great advertisement for the game.

His has been an important contribution, not just for Victory, but for the development of the sport in Australia.

When he returned to be part of Victory's first A-League squad in 2005, he was taking something of a calculated gamble.

Thompson had not made it to the biggest stages in Europe, but he was playing in Belgium's Jupiler League (at the time going through something of a hiatus following its heyday of the 1970s and '80s, and now experiencing a resurgence) and was regularly getting picked in Socceroos squads.

He had gone to Europe following a couple of breakout seasons in the old NSL, first with Gippsland Falcons (where he lived in the house of his old friend and fellow A-League warrior John Hutchinson, the Mariners skipper who was also a youngster at the Morwell club at the time) and then more spectacularly with Carlton under the tutelage of Eddie Krncevic and then Stuart Munro.

At 26, his career on the continent was at a crossroads. He could stick it out and maybe get a move to a bigger club if he was lucky, or come home and be a big fish in a small but developing pool.

He chose the latter, and it has been the best thing that happened to him. He has been well remunerated – nearly a decade as Victory's marquee player will have earned him several million dollars in wages – and has become a public figure in a way he never could have if he had stayed in Belgium, where he would have been just another relatively anonymous Australian seen only during internationals.

Importantly, Thompson also showed a generation of young players that it was possible to return to Australia, play in the A-League and retain your spot in the national team.

Thompson was pretty much an ever present in squads under Frank Farina and then his Dutch successor, Guus Hiddink, who regarded him as the sort of livewire performer who could make a real impact off the bench even at the highest levels once the sting had gone out of the game.

Hiddink had enough faith in him to start him in the crucial away leg of the World Cup qualifier in Montevideo in November 2005: yes, there was a degree of tactical choice about the selection as Hiddink didn't want other players such as Mark Bresciano and Tim Cahill to pick up yellow cards that would have ruled them out of the home leg, which was to prove very crucial. But whatever the circumstances, my memory of Thompson that day is of a player who ran, chased and worked hard to try to do a job for the team in the most challenging of environments, a packed Centenario Stadium crammed with expectant Uruguayan fans.

Thompson's scoring feats have been prodigious and he will always be remembered for two things: netting five in that grand final romp over Adelaide United in the 2007 title decider, and scoring a world record 13 goals in that 31-0 slaughter of American Samoa in 2001.

The former is a source of great pride for Thompson, the latter something of an embarrassment.

While it put him in the record books, he has always said it was something of a millstone, particularly when he first went to Europe and everyone expected him to score hatfuls of goals whenever he took to the pitch.

Whether this will be the last season for Thompson remains to be seen. If left to the player, he would probably like to continue, and a goal against Wellington on Sunday would certainly help his cause.

Whatever else happens, Melbourne Victory will always acknowledge that the decision of inaugural coach Ernie Merrick – ironically, Wellington's coach in this game – to bring him back was a master stroke, and he is sure to be remembered with fondness whenever he does hang up his boots.