A-LEAGUE FANS, RISE UP!
Time to call a spade a spade.
FFA find themselves under fire from two distinct sources - A-League club owners and the so-called Association of Australian Football Clubs, the AAFC.
A-League clubs want a larger slice of the TV revenue. Fair enough too, and this is a haggle FFA and A-League clubs need to have. Club owners have invested much in football and deserve a larger slice of the pie. As Simon Hill correctly points out, FFA have been autocratic and less than transparent, while some of the A-League clubs have behaved like brats.
An issue bigger and far more insidious is AAFC’s push for a national Division 2, complete with promotion/relegation into the A-League. Those who have read my views will know that I strongly support a self-funding second division, though not promotion and relegation. The reason is simple – the Australian sporting landscape is unlike any in the world. Combine our football’s challenges of:
a) A small population, spread thinly around the coastline;
b) A hyper-saturated market with four football codes, cricket and other sports;
c) The corporate dollar’s finite and thinly spread resources;
d) Massive distances between population centres;
e) Football’s status as johnny-come-lately to Australian sport’s mainstream;
f) A unionised A-League that demands a minimum wage and other benefits;
g) Perception that the A-League is inferior to many football leagues abroad,
and it is clear that only a very specific business model can attract funds to make the A-League a success. No other major sport has a national Division 2 in this country, let alone one with promotion into Division 1.
Could a fully professional Division 2 stand on its own financial feet, without relying on FFA resources, already stretched to breaking point? My view is that, if run sustainably and an initial start-up investment and annual membership fees are provided by financially responsible member clubs, enough corporate funds could be raised to bridge the gap and make it viable. And there is no argument that a second division would be great for football.
So is A-League expansion - the league must grow to at least 14 teams. This expansion is vital for the growth of the sport and ways must be found to make it happen.
However, promotion/relegation into the A-League is simply out of the question. The only reason that the A-League exists as a fully professional competition – FOR THE FIRST AND ONLY TIME IN OUR HISTORY – is that it presents a model that engages public and media interest.
Unlike all its forerunners, it is this model that attracts funds from Foxtel, Hyundai, Qantas, NAB and Harvey Norman – funds that offer A-League players full time, professional careers right here in Australia. It is also this model that attracts owners willing to invest in Australian football – billionaire entities such as the City Football Group, David Traktovenko, Tony Sage and the Ledman group.
This model that has brought investors in A-League clubs and the league as a whole on an unprecedented level. It has also – vitally - attracted exposure via Foxtel’s ongoing support. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is this model – and this model only – that has attracted millions of fans, both traditional and newly converted, to the terraces.
The road hasn't been a smooth one and the model isn’t without its flaws, but it is the best we’ve had.
And it works, otherwise A-League stands would be practically empty. Instead, in the past 12 years, the A-League has delivered exciting football spectacles to strong average crowds. Interest in the A-League among football and broader communities, including children and teenagers, is at an all-time high. And for the first time in history, Australian footballers are enjoying full-time, professional careers in their own country.
The A-League is a great story.
So why the fuss? What is really going on? Who is this AAFC mob? Why do they aim to upset the apple cart? And why, flying in the face of logic and common sense, do they insist on promotion and relegation into the A-League?
The answer begins way back in 2004, when the part-time NSL – broke, poorly attended and barely televised - was finally put out of its misery by the new, Federal Government-backed Football Federation Australia.
Having rightly concluded that most NSL clubs held minimal appeal in the football community, and none outside it, the newly formed FFA established a brand new national competition – one based on the one team-one city concept. Four new teams were set up in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Gosford, adding to the already geographically-aligned Adelaide United, Perth Glory, Newcastle Jets and New Zealand Knights.
Sponsors and fans liked what they saw and jumped on board and since then, the A-League has treated us, the fans, to Dwight Yorke, Juninho and Alessandro Del Piero. We have enjoyed Sydney and Melbourne derbies – dramas played out before thirty-sixty thousand screaming supporters. Football may still be fighting a glass ceiling in this country but when it comes to national competition, we’ve never had it so good.
The football benefits that we enjoy today were simply impossible under the old NSL structure. Had NSL clubs been capable of attracting anywhere near the fan and corporate support that the A-League enjoys today, they would still be in national competition and the A-League would never have seen the light of day.
The NSL carries its own proud history but was simply a model that was unsustainable into the future. And despite initial rumblings, the old NSL clubs found their level in State League competitions.
But feelings remained hurt. Proud old clubs were now sidelined and despite, at times, failing to draw over a hundred fans to NPL matches, they have refused to accept that their influence is over.
FFA’s, at times, autocratic ways, haven't helped. Their governance, while helping run an effective, popular, fully professional national competition for the first time in our football history, was contrary to FIFA’s edicts. And some slimeball managed to get that corrupt, rotting carcass of an organisation to cast its beady eye across the Pacific.
Today, FIFA and Old Soccer stand on the throat of football in this country. If FIFA meddles sufficiently to force promotion and relegation into the A-League upon us, it will, over time, sound the death knell of full-time professionalism, with all the benefits that that entails.
Not immediately, of course. But as more NPL clubs gain promotion into the A-League, the competition will lose meaning to sponsors, media and owners alike. The model that attracts millions of dollars’ worth of revenue will haemorrhage funds as key stakeholders begin to abandon the sinking ship.
With funds declining, so will on-field standards, as the best of the players will seek greater remuneration abroad. Forget Del Piero – even the likes of Milos Ninkovic and Besart Berisha and would become unaffordable, while average A-League players will hit far better paydirt in Asia.
Reverse revolution would be complete, as this country’s reactionary forces re-establish control.
The genie is out of the bottle. The same entities who brought the game to its knees twenty years ago are now agitating for a return to the bad old days – the days when they ruled the roost.
Their reasons for seeking promotion and relegation have little to do with football’s greater good, no matter the slogans they wrap themselves in. Self-serving and self-centred, they long for the influence they lost when they lost the football war. They long for centre-stage once again, despite their unwillingness to pay senior players without fleecing juniors. They long for national exposure, despite failing to attract more than a few hundred people to their grounds each week.
Their cause isn’t a noble one.
And having engaged FIFA – another organisation unworthy of running the sport (#newfifanow), I am afraid they are winning.
We, the football fans – the ones who have gained so much with the advent of the A-League – are being blindsided and have much to lose.
We are football’s silent majority. We vote with our feet and our wallets, buying A-League club memberships, merchandise and Foxtel subscriptions.
It is time we woke up, before what is enjoyed by the many, is destroyed by the machinations of a self-serving few.
And told AAFC exactly where they can stick their agenda.