Eleven games into the 26-game regular A-League season, the Central Coast Mariners find themselves seven points clear at the top of the table.

The "Miracle Mariners" have won eight games this season, the same as the previous two seasons combined.

If most sport watchers find this turn of events shocking, they'd be feeling the same way as the Mariners fans. Few of them saw this coming.

The fans are riding a giddy wave of euphoria that is going a long way towards compensating for five seasons of dejection and four wooden spoons.

There are headlines of "the best story in Aussie sport" and recollections of Cinderella stories like Leicester City's shock English Premier League title in 2016.

There's comparisons with the Oakland Athletics, a baseball success story from 2002 told in the film Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.

Then there's the puzzled questions about how the Central Coast club managed to rise so high so quickly.

One key ingredient is something that Novocastrians understand well. Pride for their city. Two Central Coast locals - captain Oliver Bozanic and stalwart Matt Simon - have lifted the team with their undeniable passion for the region. The fans can see it in their every move. The two veterans are bleeding for their hometown.

Then on Monday night, a third Central Coast local added a plot twist to the story.

Matt Hatch, who lives at Woy Woy with his mum, scored the winning goal 25 seconds into his debut in the 2-0 victory over Macarthur.

Hatch, 20, had been part of the Mariners youth academy and was once a ball boy.

The pride and the passion, though, is only half the story.

Coach Alen Stajcic, abruptly sacked as Matildas coach in 2019, has put together a quality team and brought a new level of technical and tactical nous.

Sport has long been considered a kind of modern-day religion. So it wasn't a complete surprise when Western United coach Mark Rudan recently referred to the Mariners as "walking on water" and Stajcic as a Jesus-type figure.

Rudan may have been talking in metaphor, but the Mariners are rising again in a sporting resurrection that only the football gods can fully explain.

Then again, Cinderella stories don't always end in triumph. There's that nagging fear that the Cinderella team will "turn into a pumpkin" at the stroke of midnight.

Speaking of Cinderella stories, in her interview with Oprah, Meghan Markle compared her experience marrying into the Royal Family to The Little Mermaid.

She fell in love with a prince, lost her voice but in the end she gets her voice back.

She might even live happily ever after.

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