By Davidde Corran
September 30th 2009 @ 12:23am
A-League must focus on quality not size
Gold Coast United FC player Tahj Minniecon during the United A-league team's first training session at Southport on the Gold Coast, Tuesday April 7, 2009. AAP Image/Tony Phillips
What a state Australian football is in: the Socceroos are on their way to an historic second World Cup, while their long-term successors are stuttering in Egypt; and the A-League has expanded in size and brought along some world-class names. But crowds are evaporating quicker then Brendan Fevola’s career.
Australia has put forward a World Cup bid that is starting to look as hopeless as it is ambitious and there’s even the need to defend against perpetuated myths of ‘crowd violence’.
The Australian football landscape has become a drama filled paradox of soaring highs and relentless lows.
Following Tuesday’s announcement that there will be a second A-League team in Sydney things have become even more eclectic.
I can’t help but be excited by the prospect of a Sydney derby with a team from football’s ‘heartland’ (and I’m a Melbournian), but there’s no shortage of disconcerting surprises form the announcement.
Firstly why was Canberra strung along for all this time if Football Federation Australia were always going to go for a West Sydney bid?
Even if all they could muster was a half-baked package with few concrete plans.
The South Coast bid was all but ruled out due to it’s inability to find a stadium which met Football Federation Australia’s stringent criteria yet this successful West Sydney bid hasn’t even considered where it might play its games.
It’s an astounding set of double standards from the game’s governing body.
Of course, these two regions have been given a consolation prize from Ben Buckley.
Canberra will be an “obvious priority” for a 13th license.
Buckley explaining that Football Federation Australia “will be working with the ACT Government and the Canberra consortium to achieve this in an appropriate timeframe.”
Adding: “We will remain in close discussion with (the South Coast bid) regarding potential future plans for the South Coast including women’s and youth football.
I’m sure everyone who put in countless hours of their time in Wollongong and Canberra really appreciate that. It’s like being given a balloon instead of the giant teddy bear at one of those game stands at an amusement park.
Those games are rigged and you always end up leaving with something you never wanted.
Most significant of all is Buckley’s determination to continue expansion even further. The league is beginning to fail as it is. A landscape that involves dwindling crowds, an accelerating player drain plus the financial instability for a number of clubs is hardly fertile ground for expansion.
Sixteen teams works fine for the AFL where there isn’t the threat that the league’s best players will be lured away by larger salary packages.
Lets not forget the Asian Football Confederation’s directorate that all countries participating in the Asian Champions League must have leagues with relegation and promotion.
FFA would be better off focusing on the long term goal of instituting a second division, which should include the three areas that missed out on bids (Wollongong, Canberra and Tasmania), then the continued expansion of the A-League.
But let’s not even go there yet. Any further expansion would be like building the second story of a house before you’ve even secured the foundations.
The A-League must focus on sustaining and developing its quality not its size.
Football fans in Wollongong and Canberra have every right to feel aggrieved while the rest of Australia’s round ball lovers should be concerned.
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ABCDEFG said | September 30th 2009 @ 2:26am | Report comment
Definitely one of the better articles I’ve seen on this site. The A-league really should be doing something about those consistently low crowds (which keep on getting lower by the way) before they start expanding the league with more teams.
albe said | September 30th 2009 @ 7:18am | Report comment
i think 12 teams is the right number for the top flight. But all this fapping about the league being in trouble is nonsense. The fact still remains that compared with other AFC countries – and around the world – the A-League crowds and playing standards compare very well. Comparisons to other sports like rugby, Aussie rules, cricket etc are irrelevant.
Agree that A2 is the next phase of expansion … but limited to regional areas and emerging markets… ie not stacked out with Sydney or Melbourne league sides.
A promotion battle among areas like Tassie, Geelong, Sth Coast NSW, Canberra (potentially more NZ sides if they are staying long term) would mean sides actually have to earn their place on the pitch. This would increase the prestige of the A-League as a whole and be much fairer. Then there’s the relegation fight that would add extra drama to the bottom of the table.
While A2 could realistically come in within a few seasons, the promotion/relegation component of it is still five years away at least imo.
md said | September 30th 2009 @ 11:49am | Report comment
Good post. An 8 team B league should be the next goal after expansion to 12. If that means expanding the A-league to 14 for a while, and then relegating the bottom 2 teams once the B league is ready, then all the better really! Add to your list another team from Sydney, Melbourne, Qld and NZ, and you practically have a B league ready to go.
Ben said | September 30th 2009 @ 8:48am | Report comment
I can’t see how promotion/relegation would work in Oz. If the standard of play is already considered rubbish, then who in their right mind is going to watch a team play in the second devision of a second-rate competition? Relegation would kill a club. If it was attracting 6000 supporters in the A1, it would barely scrape 3000 in A2. Everybody wants to watch the best, not some mediocre rubbish.
Tom said | September 30th 2009 @ 9:14am | Report comment
I don’t understand your point. How do you get a second division without expansion?
I also think its dubious that such a system would increase ‘quality’. It certainly wouldn’t do much for equality as the yoyo teams would find it hard to compete with the stronger teams that manage to stay in the top flight for long periods.
But I agree that the FFA’s actions are a giant insult to the South Coast and particularly the Canberra bids.
Ben of Phnom Penh said | September 30th 2009 @ 9:38am | Report comment
I don’t entirely agree, Davidde. Quality is a key issue however expansion is required to achieve variety in contests. It isn’t a case of either-or.
Brett McKay said | September 30th 2009 @ 9:39am | Report comment
Be interesting to see what sort of crowd – if any – turn out in Canberra to watch Central Coast v Adelaide at the end of Oct…
Ryan Steele said | September 30th 2009 @ 11:07am | Report comment
I know there’s at least one Adelaide supporter going… so you can guarantee an attendance of at least 1.
It’s an improvement on the last Canberra A-League game, right?
Melbourne v Adelaide is the week before, so most people are preparing away trips to Melbourne, rather than Canberra, because they won’t necessarily have money for both. Probably not the best organisation from the FFA, in reality.
cab711 said | September 30th 2009 @ 10:21am | Report comment
Another positive article about the A-League on the Roar, hold on a minute, no its not!
Ryan Steele said | September 30th 2009 @ 11:43am | Report comment
“Quality” is a mixed bag. Doesn’t really have a finite definition.
We’ve seen quality players in the game (Yorke, Qu, Culina), we’ve seen quality games (Melbourne – Brisbane, Newcastle – Sydney), quality off-season signings (Perth Glory, Gold Coast United), we’ve seen quality tacticians (Culina, Lavicka, Littbarski), and we’ve seen quality goals (Miura, Fowler, Smeltz).
At least one of each has been seen in this season, so far.
Not a single league or club in the world can produce the same quality with every game. There are no highlights shows in the world that go for five hours, just to fit in all the goodness that the week has provided.
There are, indeed, some aspects that could be improved. A lot of that, however, is about the money flowing into the clubs, than anything else. The same money is required to make signings, to have elite training, and to develop better community interaction.
There aren’t enough people coming through the gates, because there isn’t enough quality. There isn’t enough quality, because there aren’t enough people coming through the gates. It’s a two-way street, and one can’t improve, without the other.
The main clubs in financial trouble (Brisbane, Adeladie, North Queensland) all need to work on this. The FFA will do the best they can – and are moving ahead with Adelaide, by creating a new board, and are currently in talks with potential local and overseas investors – and the people need to work hard to convince players, clubs, and investors that it’s worth building the best team possible.
Finding that balance should be the main objective.
Timmo said | September 30th 2009 @ 1:21pm | Report comment
I think 12 teams is definately enough for our premier league and then have at least an 8-10 team second division. Unlike the English Championship which has more teams and plays more games than the premier league with their league fixturing they could run a 21 to 27 round season so it is slightly shorter but have it as a true league format. No Final Series for the second division. Just Home and Away, Top 2 promoted. Surely would cut costs to run a final series in the second division.
Quality can only possibly improve if they play a longer season and more games. 12 is the way to go and then look at either a cup competition to. We should stay at 12 because if teams do fold then they could relocate clubs to either Canberra, South Coast, Tasmania etc. We don’t want anymore New Zealand Knights examples.
Gweeds said | September 30th 2009 @ 2:08pm | Report comment
I think there is a bit of contradiction in this piece, maybe I haven’t read it properly?
One one hand it states that the A-League shouldn’t expand. But then chides the FFA for not including Canberra,and then suggests a second division which to be honest would attract even lower crowds and would drain the resources even further.
Pippinu said | September 30th 2009 @ 2:23pm | Report comment
I agree – it is a little bit contradictory, especially when one thing is driving both expansion and a 2nd divvie: ACL representation.
AndyRoo said | September 30th 2009 @ 5:02pm | Report comment
We missed out on ACL representation because of the size of our top flight last time. Like Korea and Singapore we have stated “where working on a 2nd division” and apparently thats enough to satisfy them.
Adding a 10 team second division of poorly supported clubs would be huge financial drain and only worth 1 ACL place at most. Looking at how the other spots have been allocated it would be easy to make an argument that we wouldn’t need a second division at all.
If we had a 16 team comp of J league quality and our fans traveled to ACL away games and attended the ACL home games in big numbers we would get 4 spots.
tony yeboah said | September 30th 2009 @ 4:47pm | Report comment
I don’t believe that it is such a kick in the proverbials for South Coast and Canberra because to be honest you would have to have been Blind Freddy to not see that Western Sydney was going to get the 12th licencse, even 12 months ago this was always going to be the result. Reason. The FFA are pushing ahead with expansion, more teams, more games, more major centres covered (ie. Melbourne and especially Western Sydney) all equals more TV revenue when the next deal is re-negotiated. Sure, crowds are a problem at the moment but it will not be as big a problem as not getting the millions out of the next TV deal.
“The league is beginning to fail as it is”
Such positivity Davidde!
Warren Vargas said | September 30th 2009 @ 6:15pm | Report comment
I don’t think they’ve learnt from previous mistakes, not only by the previous league, but from other sports like Basketball. How long will it be before we see an A-league team fold, then another…etc Haven’t we already been here? Sure in an ideal world it would be nice to have 12-20 strong teams, but it’s not really viable at this stage, it weakens the quality of the competition because we don’t have the players here and would use probably close to 50% international players or more to make up the numbers. Why can’t they consolidate what they have now and build the league so it’s as solid as a rock, before gradually bringing in more teams. I just think they feel they’ve had 4 or 5 good years, ok it’s working now…who else wants to join.
I can see at least 1 or 2 teams folding by 2015, if that happens, then they’ve failed those teams and supporters.
Davidde Corran said | September 30th 2009 @ 8:13pm | Report comment
Those who doubt the trouble the A-League is beginning to find itself in underestimate its problems. The financial burden is the most significant and it really is a concern. All the other issues, while being more peripheral, are still linked to the main problem of long term viability.
There’s nothing contradictory about stating that further expansion right now is a mistake but when it does continue it should be with a second division not a 13th and 14th team.
Relegation and promotion isn’t just relevant to the amount of ACL places we could potentially be given. The competition regulations clearly state that if you don’t comply with all the criteria you wont be included at all. Some leeway has been given for the time being to everyone besides Japan (because they are the only country who comply with all the criteria) but slowly they’ll tighten the reins. In the future Australia could miss out entirely.
Pippinu said | September 30th 2009 @ 8:21pm | Report comment
Davidde
fair enough – that’s not contradictory – but it’s still a tough ask to go from 12 teams, to all of a sudden having a 2nd divvie with at least 8 teams in one hit.
A while back, I foresaw a possible route to a 2nd divvie was to gradually grow to 14 teams, and on the eve of introducing a 2nd divvie, relegate two of those teams, meaning that only 6 new teams have to be introduced (which is still a very big ask).
Either way you look at it – introducing the 2nd divvie will be one of the biggest risks and challenges the FFA will ever face.
As for current problems, the early planning of the FFA was that clubs would take about 5 years to become stable and start breaking even, and up to that point, they hoped to average a crowd of 10,000 per game.
Here we are in the 5th season, and the average crowds have been achieved, and at least two clubs were turning a profit very early in the piece.
That’s the good news – the bad news is that a few clubs have probably gone backwards finanically in the last 18 months.
I also have to agree with md, who said that it’s surprising Perth have managed to retain any support after four woeful seasons – they could be on the verge of getting back to the original glory days.
So there’s a bit of good news amongst the gloom (about evenly split, it has to be admitted).
Davidde Corran said | September 30th 2009 @ 8:43pm | Report comment
Pippinu, good points and an interesting idea on introducing the 2nd division.
Wouldn’t it just be great if Perth managed to get themselves back on track both on the pitch and financially? Just the sort of positive story the game needs. Adelaide’s fans deserve credit as well for turning up in decent numbers despite some of the tosh their side has been churning out.
Pippinu said | September 30th 2009 @ 8:49pm | Report comment
Yes – actually the Adelaide crowds have probably been the success story of the season.