Still time left to plug the A-League crowd drain

 
Jesse Fink Roar Pro

By , 26 Sep 2008 Jesse Fink is a Roar Pro

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Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory in action last month in Sydney. (AAP Image/Jason McCawley)
Your redoubtable blogger got hammered by readers of my The World Game column in the first round of the season for saying A-League crowds were “going south”.

It wasn’t just a hunch.

The attendance figure for the Sydney-Melbourne blockbuster at the Sydney Football Stadium was under half of what it should have been.

Normally you would posit that 35,000 people at the very least would turn up for the derby between Australia’s two biggest clubs (there was a time when such a clash was getting over 50,000; albeit at a bigger stadium). Instead, just 16,000 rocked up and that figure was reckoned to be highly generous.

Anecdotally, what I’ve been hearing for a while now is that Sydney crowd figures are being routinely inflated; and not just Sydney. It’s happening across the league. Reminds me of the bad old Super League–Australian Rugby League stoush when the two warring camps were vying for supremacy and inflating their crowd figures to get one up on each other.

Now the FFA, surprisingly, has admitted there is a problem.

Over the past weekend the Sydney–Adelaide and Queensland–Newcastle matches only drew 12,000 punters through the turnstiles, with less than 10,000 stumping up to Bluetongue Stadium to see Central Coast face off with a rampant Melbourne Victory. Perth drew a pitiful 4000 for the game against Wellington in the west, but this was Perth, after all.

Obviously the numbers are affected by the fact rugby league is deep into the business end of the season, but that is a red herring. So is the global financial squeeze and the summer versus winter argument.

Also dismiss the notion that simply lifting advertising spend is going to arrest the slide.

People aren’t that stupid.

The problem as I see it is that there simply aren’t enough incentives for people to actually make the effort to go to the games when they are freely available, live, on pay television. The dollars it costs for a family and bunch of mates to sit in front of the box with a spread of food and sufficient liquid refreshment is still considerably lower than the damage it would have just to buy entry tickets.

It’s cheaper, more comfortable and far less hassle just to stay at home.

Now if someone truly special, like a Juninho, for instance, was turning out for Sydney FC, I would be tempted to make the effort to go to the Sydney Football Stadium. I would want to see his skills up close and in the flesh.

But Sydney doesn’t have Juninho anymore. There’s no razzle dazzle; nothing to elevate the team beyond the good and capable unit they are.

People are drawn to spectacle, and Sydney doesn’t offer it.

When Tony Lockett played for the Sydney Swans, for example, the club had to beat fans away with a stick. They couldn’t get enough of going to the Sydney Cricket Ground to see this magnetic, brutal, flawed but extraordinarily talented sportsman who was then at his peak.

After Lockett retired, the Swans struggled to regain the level of support they had enjoyed during the Lockett era. His “replacement”, Barry Hall, never quite cut it.

As for Sydney FC, I said back in March at the time of John Aloisi’s signing that he wouldn’t pull the crowds and was ridiculously overpriced and I feel I have been more than vindicated. He’s just coming back from injury, yes, but a good test for a player’s pull is how many people are talking about him on the street.

No one is talking about Aloisi. He’s a top bloke but yesterday’s news.

Sydney people are fickle and demand to see the best talent available; it’s a fact of life.

If the A-League wants to restore some robustness to crowd figures across the competition it could do a lot worse than put the feelers out for some ex-European or J-League players currently out of contract or on their way up and bring them in en masse for “Version 5.0″.

And not plodders. Real entertainers. Dare I say it, Nicky Carle.

Look at the impact young Jin-Hyung Song, a mesmerizing talent, has had at the Jets. Costa Rican Carlos Hernandez is also showing some silky touches for Victory.

It’ll cost a packet, but it’s a better investment for the future than over-the-top and flashy advertising.

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