The A-League is reaching it's climax, with the Grand Final just a week away. Last season's excellent champions Brisbane Roar await the winner of Perth Glory and Central Coast Mariners, in what promises to be another sold out spectacle up in Brisbane's Suncorp stadium in front of over 50'000 fans. The presence of Socceroo royalty Brett Emerton and Harry Kewell has raised the profile of the game immensely, even though the two stars will look back on a season of disappointment for their respective clubs. The end of season gala awards are being held, with much to celebrate after a regular season packed with drama, excitement and, crucially, commercial success. Attendances, membership numbers, and viewing figures have all been on the rise which point to a healthy sport on the up in a country dominated by rugby and Aussie Rules.
Despite all this positivity, the game here in Oz is in tatters right now. Where to start?
Firstly, the governing body, the Football Federation Australia (FFA) have, for want of a better phrase, killed a football club. Gold Coast United, three years after their creation, have been terminated. They are no more, they have ceased to be, they are an ex-club. Last year the North Queensland Fury fell to a similar fate, rubbed out never to return. The reason in both cases is simple, the attendances are low and so the club is not deemed to be profitable. Since the model in Australia has the FFA providing significant funding to the clubs, they obviously have a concern about those minnows which cannot generate sufficient revenue to meet their cost of existence.
Gold Coast have had an average attendance of less than 4'000 this season; a situation exacerbated by their 27'000 capacity Skilled Park home. There are plenty of clubs in League One and Two with similar figures, but their hardy followers aren't rattling around like brain cells in Wayne Rooney's head. Having a small crowd in a big stadium just looks pitiful and, frankly embarrassing.
Unfortunately for Gold Coast, at times their football has been just as humiliating as the sight of their empty stadium. Rock bottom of the league pretty much all year, with only 4 wins to cheer the gold and blue few, the truth of the matter is they have not been up to the task. What annoys me though is the response of the FFA to this mediocrity. In a fledgling league, they have to support the clubs and not scrap anyone who doesn't immediately pull in the big(ish) crowds that the likes of Melbourne Victory, Sydney FC and Brisbane Roar enjoy.
With the salary cap and restrictions on foreign players, the A-League is a much more inherently equal system than any of the established European leagues. Money talks here the same as anywhere, sure, but not quite as loudly. Harry Kewell, the uber-marquee superstar, has done wonders for the profile of the game, but could not prevent Victory making a mockery of their name and finishing up 8th out of 10. Sydney, Melbourne Heart and in particular Perth Glory have all enjoyed significant improvements on their 10-11 campaign - Perth going from 9th to 3rd and as mentioned before, just a game away from the grand final. There is no reason why, with a bit of patience and persistence, Gold Coast United could not improve and build as a team and a club, but the ruthless blunderers in charge have put paid to that.
There is method to their madness, or so they will have you believe, in that they have set up a new club for the 2012-13 A-League; yet to be named but based in Western Sydney. This godforsaken area is something of a heartland for football and as such it is seen as an ideal place to launch a new club. Likely to become the Millwall of the A-League (on the news over here the words: 'someone was shot today' are always followed by: 'in Sydney's West') the FFA are hoping for big crowds and passionate support.
Passionate support is something that the Newcastle Jets have enjoyed - a recent derby defeat to Sydney FC in a great 3-2 battle for the playoffs saw them bring a couple of thousand Jetsons to the Harbour City. The club that boasts forgotten men Francis Jeffers and Michael Bridges are another in turmoil, with their billionaire owner basically pulling the plug and handing back the licence to the FFA. What this means for the club remains to be seen - it is perhaps not as calamitous as, say, Roman Abramovich ditching Chelsea; but with the constant ins and outs of the A-League no-one is ruling anything out. The Jets averaged gates of over 12'000 this year and, if they were to fall apart, would leave a significant hole in a league currently looking increasingly shambolic.
The chopping and changing is in my opinion completely self-defeating, and the FFA are killing their own product with their stupid actions. I accept that 3'000 fans on average is not great, particularly with the running costs of such a large stadium. But every league has it's minnows, every league needs it's minnows. The A-League is not going to become the Bundesliga overnight, the simple fact of the matter is that football does play second fiddle to rugby league, union and AFL. The FFA may dream of packed out stadiums but this is something that has to be a long term aim, and even if the current improvement does continue, there will still be smaller teams with smaller fan bases - this is a relatively small country in terms of population and outside of the major cities, there just aren't that many people around.
The Western Sydney experiment is an interesting one, and I accept that the theory behind the location of the new club is sound. But what they don't seem to understand is that you can't just manufacture a club and expect instant loyalty and devotion. It takes years for a football club to truly become embedded in the identity of a town or region. A club needs to have a folklore behind it; classic players, famous victories, organic rivalries that arise based on injustice or disloyalty, glorious successes and misery too. Western Sydney may well develop this over the coming years - but so would Gold Coast United, and North Queensland before them. If the FFA keep killing off clubs as soon as they think they are a bit small, they will never have a chance to achieve a league that reaches it's full potential.
Having written on here about idiocy in the English FA, UEFA, FIFA, the Argentinian FA and more; it appears to me that, wherever you are in the world, even a long way from home, one thing remains constant. The governing bodies of this beautiful game tend to be incompetent, infuriating, detached and deluded. Sadly, Australia is no different.
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