Citizen journalist PETER KATSAMBANIS writes that the Melbourne Storm has been presented with the ultimate marketing opportunity - us versus them.

The doom and gloom merchants are already sounding the death knell for Melbourne Storm, a team that has never quite been embraced as part of Melbourne’s sporting fabric.

The Storm have now been exposed as cheats, publicly humiliated and stripped of their dignity as well as their bling. Shamed and unloved, relocation to Gosford is already being publicly mooted as a viable option.

But rather than writing the eulogy for a failed rugby league experiment, this salary cap scandal actually provides a unique opportunity for Storm to finally and properly embrace Melbourne and for the city to embrace them in return.

Since they were set up by News Ltd in 1998, the Storm have established a small niche rather than a stronghold in the self-proclaimed world’s sporting capital. They have been a strange tribal curio rather than “our team” in the NRL.

The game may be foreign to Melbourne but Storm have not really helped themselves. They have not unearthed any local players, they have based their second team in Queensland and they have chosen to play at one of our nation’s most insipid and inhospitable stadiums. Fancy taking the wife and kids to cold and wet Olympic Park in the middle of winter to watch a strange game? No thanks.

But now the dynamics have changed. All over the Melbourne sporting media it is now “our Melbourne Storm” that has been humiliated by the NRL powerbrokers in enemy territory – Sydney.

The bad guys in Sydney! Already you can see the making of the classic us against them sporting fantasy that marketers can only dream of creating.

In a fortuitous set of circumstances – the perfect storm to pardon the pun – the Storm are due to move to the magnificent new AAMI Park next month. What a perfect time to flood the market with tickets and attract a crowd curious to sample the atmosphere at the new ground. And a perfect time to pump up the anti-Sydney, anti-establishment, anti-NRL sentiment to maximum volume. Time to get the whole city and the whole state behind Melbourne Storm.

Maybe they can go all the way and borrow from their local soccer cousins who simply and shamelessly stole from Teddy Whitten. Stick a big white V on the front of the jumper for the ultimate in double-impact. They and the fans can pay homage to their home state whilst flashing a big fat Australian salute to the NRL spoilsports in Sydney

It is not totally inconceivable that the Storm can become an overnight sensation despite more than a decade of trying. Fans were beating down the doors even at horrible Olympic Park back when they started out and even as late as Good Friday they showed that they could draw a big crowd when playing in a good stadium and promoting the game properly.

The Storm players and their loyal fans will be down in the dumps right now. I know the feeling having lived through the death and eventual rebirth of South Sydney. It will feel like they are playing the rest of the 2010 season for nothing.

So why not play for, and support, something that few other teams in the NRL can aspire to. They can go out and play with Big V pride for their home town – and they will find that all of Melbourne will be right there beside them. Now and into the future.

Peter Katsambanis is a lawyer and fanatical sports fan. He is a regular panellist on Sky News' Melbourne Lunch.