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So here we are, two months after Australia missed out on hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup and the game is stuck in a state of flux. North Queensland Fury looks like it will soon be no more; Sydney Rovers never was; and despite their most successful season yet, Brisbane Roar needs another bailout from Football Federation Australia.
The truth is, though, that none of this is a real surprise.
In the days leading up to the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting rights decisions last year, I wrote how I feared that exactly this would happen.
“Of course football will go on in Australia, but I see a ‘football recession’ in the game’s future if things don’t pan out in Zurich.
“Like pruning a tree, cutting back some sections of the game may be necessary to help it gradually grow in the future, and the football media will be hit hard.”
It’s a bitter pill to swallow but this is the new reality of Australian football – for the time being, the goal is simply to try and keep the game’s head above water.
While I’ll be disappointed if the Fury does go the same way as Sydney Rovers and the New Zealand Knights, I’m not sure this is just a bad thing.
The pros for keeping the club with the league’s most disgusting colours alive are numerous, but so are the cons. The MLS, which is now starting to find some real traction and growth, lost a lot of clubs early on its life span.
An even more recent example comes from the US Women’s Professional Soccer league.
In January last year, ahead of the WPS’s second season, inaugural champions and showpiece club LA Sol ceased operations. It was a bitterly disappointing moment for the women’s football community in the US, but one designed to secure the long-term future of the fledgling competition.
Essentially, the Sol was not a viable outfit and, as I wrote at the time, the league “cut off the diseased limb before it infects the rest of the league.”
It’s something to consider as a number of clubs struggle to find their feet in the A-League.
It’s not all bleak, but unfortunately the game still has a while to go before the hard times are over.
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