Australia’s World Cup bid is drastically flawed

 
Leigh Eustace Roar Rookie

By Leigh Eustace, 25 Mar 2009 Leigh Eustace is a Roar Rookie

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This country for years has been noted for its madness for sport and for punching above its weight at international competition. And the rest of the world marvels at that, often with jealousy.

And we’re known for hosting world class events, major events, events seemingly out of the grasp of a small, tucked away nation who relies on the rest of the world for in the majority everything else.

The FIFA World Cup would be the pièce de résistance for this country’s sporting legacy.

It seems almost like a natural progression for this sport-crazy nation to host the globe’s biggest sporting event. And that would be that, the battlers from down under have done it all.

But this idea that Australia’s merit to host this simply awesome show has a sense of mere formality to it only goes so far.

For all those reasons that an Australian World Cup would work, there are almost equally as many reasons as to why it wouldn’t.

You know – Newton’s third idea.

The press thus far has been too kind to Mr Lowy and his buddies at the FFA with their pipedream of hosting football’s greatest prize.

And low and behold, the Federal and State Governments, in times of recession and global financial crisis, have been windswept in the romanticism of such a proposal too.

Essentially the big-head nature we’ve now obtained to our sporting prowess has seen that we now carry ourselves in any sporting sense with arrogance and self-absorption.

If we want something, we probably deserve it. If we want to hold something, we probably could hold it tomorrow.

Just think about it, whenever there seems to be an Olympic Games in trouble, or a world championships host struggling to be ready in time, how often do we, and no-one else funnily enough, suggest we could step in and save the world at a moment’s notice.

Please, we’re good, but not that superior.

So where do our rose-coloured glasses get us in a pickle regarding hosting either the 2018 or 2022 World Cup?

It falls down essentially in two areas.

Firstly, there is the timing issue. To this stage, the issue of dealing with domestic football codes hasn’t been addressed. Oh sure, it’s the world’s biggest event, the AFL, NRL, ARU, amongst other organisations can merely step aside for a fortnight or two whilst we conduct our brilliance.

But it’s by no means that simple.

For six weeks, all these competitions need to stop operating or go into such a revised competition fixturing-wise that it’s almost counter-productive to keep running.

The idea in Melbourne is that the AFL can use Telstra Dome, Etihad Stadium, or whatever they’re calling it this week whilst the World Cup can use the MCG and the soon-to-be-finished Rectangular Stadium that by then would be expanded to the required 40,000 minimum capacity (this is also totally flawed by a point I’ll make later on).

The AFL scraped through when the Commonwealth Games came to town in 2006 without use of the MCG. But that was for four weeks, this will be for six.

By then the competition will have an extra two teams, resulting in an extra match to be played each weekend.

And when Her Majesty’s athletics carnival was on, the season hadn’t started yet, so any interference was lessened. The World Cup would be almost bang-on in the middle of the football season, which would be the most undesirable timing for a fixture disruption as far as the AFL is concerned.

The NRL could suffice without the use of its bigger stadiums for a month or so, but can the clubs afford to? The sustainability of some of Sydney’s oldest and most proudest clubs rely on surprisingly better stadium deals from ANZ Stadium and the Sydney Football Stadium.

The money isn’t in playing out of traditional suburban grounds anymore, and if pushed into going back to these venues, or to some other alternative, the already tinkering competition could look substantially different if a World Cup came to town.

The World Cup could be that final straw to the NRL’s camel back.

The Tri-Nations would have to be bumped back, and tinkering with the scheduling of the lucrative domestic internationals, or the lucrative European internationals would also ensue.

Either way, rugby union would be also disrupted.

And sure, the World Cup could be worked around, but as you can see, by throwing the World Cup stone into the pond, you must not disregard the enormous ripple affect on the other football codes.

The second, what I’m calling brain fade made by those entrusted with the responsibility of all this, is the issue of venues.

Let me start this off with a comment by esteemed Fairfax scribe Michael Lynch:

“FIFA expects a World Cup host to have at least 12 stadiums of more than 40,000 seats and one of more than 80,000 seats. Australia has more than enough stadiums to qualify.”

Whoa Michael! Are you sure of that?

And before we isolate Lynch on this, he has many other friends who are towing this preposterous party line, including the Prime Minister, many state Premiers, the FFA chairman, CEO as well as many soccer pundits.

This comes back to this arrogant and often ignorant ideal that we are truly world class in anything sporting.

I mentioned earlier this belief that the idea to solve the AFL clash in Melbourne is to give up the Telstra Dome so that the football can still run whilst the World Cup has use of the MCG and Rectangular Stadium.

This is tied into an idea where the AFL continues its competition throughout the duration of the World Cup.

Plan A is to have the AFL to stop so the Australia bid has access to all three. And here’s where the inane cock-ups begin.

FIFA rules stipulate that only one city may have two venues. Every other city involved is then limited to one.

You would’ve heard, from many of an authoritative soul, that Melbourne has three venues, Sydney three, Brisbane two. And all we’d need is Perth and Adelaide to jump on board and we are practically there.

It’s so embarrassingly off the mark.

Melbourne or Sydney will only be able to use one stadium.

If we assume that’s Sydney for the moment, don’t worry about the Rectangular Stadium – once the MCG is selected, it can sit and collect dust for two months, it can’t be included.

So once the clever ones at FFA realise this ‘one city – two stadiums’ rule, they’ll realise they better start talking to the likes of Newcastle, Townsville, Gosford, Canberra, about how they’d feel about bigger stadiums, because believe you me, we’ll need at least four, yes four, other cities not named Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide or Brisbane if we want to get a bid together, let alone succeed in the winning the right to stage it.

And whilst the MCG, ANZ Stadium and Suncorp lend themselves to being existing venues that meet the FIFA stadia recommendations, other issues crop up.

The Western Australian State Government has knocked back the plan to build a new world-class stadium to replace Subiaco Oval.

As it stands, no stadium is suitable in Perth, and unless they eventually decide to reignite the new stadium plans, Perth’s outlook for World Cup action looks bleak.

Subiaco is far from capable and the costs required to redevelop it to meet FIFA standards almost equate to a new stadium.

At this stage, funds to do either are far from forthcoming.

Adelaide is the victim of its State’s financial woes. As it stands, AAMI Stadium is far from being a World Cup venue. Ironically, after a mere $190m upgrade the SANFL sees it differently: “When complete, the redeveloped AAMI Stadium would be Commonwealth Games-ready and FIFA compliant for World Cup or international soccer.”

Yet Ben Buckley, in a rare moment of public acknowledgment that the FFA do have some idea about the hosting requirements, has come out and labelled Adelaide in as much danger of missing out as Perth if it doesn’t build a new stadium: “The clock is ticking, we have to have the submission done by the end of the year,” Buckley said.

“If a decision is not made soon, Adelaide is in danger of missing out. We don’t want a city with a proud history like Adelaide to miss out.”

Seems like blackmail to the SA Government to get a wriggle on, and sort something out, but it all looks hopeless when the people that Buckley are aiming these remarks at, the same people who have the power to make the changes required, have such a misguided and unfortunate view:

“We’ve already got world-class stadiums in Adelaide,” the South Austalian Sports Minister Michael Wright said in response to the Buckley’s plea.

So Adelaide looks in dire straits to having a venue suitable anytime soon, and given the WA Government’s track record, you’d be more inclined to back the SA Government in, that’s how bad Harvest Terrace has been at these sorts of things.

This idea that we have already enough stadiums is way off-limits. By my count, as you read this now, we have five ready to go, but cut that down to four because of the one-city-two-stadium rule.

Realistically speaking, we’d never look like having ten venues by 2018. If we did, we’d have spent so much money on what some will become white elephants that the World Cup would be indeed counter-productive.

Do we want something counter-productive, especially in these times?

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