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Ex-NSL clubs should be able to join A-League

Roar Guru
9th August, 2010
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Roar Guru
9th August, 2010
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2418 Reads

First I’ll state that there should be no monocultural clubs allowed in the A-League. In the professional era of Australian football, having a supporter base limited to a particular minority group is not really acceptable for its growth.

However, that doesn’t mean that no previous ethnic clubs shouldn’t be allowed in the A-League. Some will argue that there are already two in the A-League – Sydney FC has been called a rebranded Sydney City, a club with links to Jewish community and Brisbane Roar has links to Queensland Lions, a Dutch club.

Instead of looking at that as cynically as how FFA are discriminating by letting in clubs of particular safe and media-friendly ethnicity, whilst not letting in clubs of other ethnicity, people should look at it as a partial guidance on how the previous NSL clubs can return themselves to the A-League.

Simply put, those clubs have outgrown their ethnic roots and that people from all ethnicity can go attend those matches without feeling uncomfortable or as outsiders. If any previous ex-NSL clubs want to join the A-League then they have to demonstrate the ability to do that.

Of course, clubs like Sydney Olympics and South Melbourne FC will always be more popular within the Greek community and most likely have a higher representative of Greeks within the supporter base and the officials running the club. However, that shouldn’t be an issue because there is a difference between a club that is popular within an ethnic community and an ethnic club. One is an Australian club that is popular within a certain demographics, the other is a club existence is there to serve a particular ethnic group in a community, which I believe would be inappropriate for an A-League club at a professional level.

So those clubs should be allowed to join the A-League but under conditions that the club is willing to branch out and are able to attract supporters from different nationalities. They should also ensure that the environment should be there so that the supporters of different background don’t feel alienated and this may involve some sacrifice. They should also be willing to follow the rules of FFA such as their ban of non-Australian flags in a A-League match.

If the clubs are able to do that, then they should be welcome back to the A-League. There are some good signs that South Melbourne FC are willing to do that and I was pretty disappointed that the Southern Cross bid was dismissed out of hand by FFA due to their links with South Melbourne despite their willingness to attract people of different nationalities. Nevertheless, the ball is in the court of the ex-NSL clubs to demonstrate they can reform and not the other way around.

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