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Is the damage to North Queensland football irreparable?

Roar Guru
19th April, 2011
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Roar Guru
19th April, 2011
108
3165 Reads

When all else is said and done, the A-League’s North Queensland Fury are gone. The dust has barely settled at Dairy Farmers Stadium, but now the questions must turn from who is to blame to calculating the effects of the Fury’s demise.

While I have been criticised and had my intentions called into question when commenting on football issues, being an Aussie Rules supporter with little love for the A-League, rest assured my heart is firmly in a green-and-white strip while writing this.

From the moment I read in the Townsville Bulletin in my father’s home in Annandale, Townsville, that Robbie ‘God’ Fowler had signed up as the club’s marquee player, I watched the Fury’s progression with interest, even when returning home to my native land of Adelaide and my AFL-loving life.

Why would I have such an interest? I can assure it’s not because I thought the club would fail. It was something said by a great man of football in this country, Carl Veart, whose son played football with my younger brother when he lived in Adelaide.

Carl told my father that his anticipated move to Townsville would be excellent for my brother’s football, as North Queensland had the most potential for the development of young footballers in Australia.

What is to become of them now?

The concern for the FFA now is that they have burnt a bridge in the north, denying them access to a future gold mine.

The AFL have already murmured their intention to move into the tropics, and Aussie Rules is developing grassroots participation with Auskick, amateur comps and the region’s population of southern ex-pats.

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The damage done to the brand could be generational. With no professional team to follow, where will the young football-loving ‘tropos’ turn? Their heroes will be miles south in the Gold Coast or Brisbane, while basketball and league continue their dominance and the AFL begins its invasion over the next ten years or so.

Another team will not solve the issue, thanks to the passion of Fury supporters who now roundly hate the FFA. While few in the community, the F-Troop were a vocal and proud group, and undoubtedly their anger with the FFA will be taught to their children, and their grandchildren will not even remember the North’s chance at the big league.

And why should the FFA care? Simple. Along with the south of Western Australia, North Queensland is one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. All those hearts and minds ready to be won, and most are already broken.

The FFA have now firmly shut the door on an entire region of Australia. North Queensland can no longer be viewed as a backwater second to the south and only good for tourism.

The money involved in the mining and defense industries will only continue to bolster the region, and its population will only continue to grow. The FFA, meanwhile, will find themselves on the outer.

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