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It’s a familiar sight across the globe, with Gold Coast United failing miserably to convert the wealth of one of Australia’s richest men into football success. Stakeholders in Australian football need to start thinking from the ground up.
Clubs made without community support are destined to failure.
Whether it’s the A-League or EPL, clubs need community support and the community to feel like they are part of the club.
Community ownership is a platform that can take the A-League where it needs to go. The expansion so far under FFA has been rushed and mismanaged. Gold Coast United and North Queensland Fury were destined to fail. The lack of true football identity in those clubs and the disconnection with their community were their downfall.
They had a support base, and I feel for those who have lost their club, but it was created on the handshakes of a few businessmen who thought they knew football. This was not and should not be how football is given life in new regions across Australia.
The A-League should expand on a merit-based system and encourage community ownership models, of whatever variety, to create sustainable clubs that have a lasting legacy and true identity. They must be part of whichever town or city they are from.
I would like to see the A-League at 12 clubs, and the AFC has pointed at this as a necessity, along with promotion and relegation, to compete fully in the AFC Champions League.
As the FFA seem only able to keep the HAL at ten teams, one of which is based in New Zealand, where will Gold Coast’s replacement come from? While chasing the AFL to the Gold Coast and western Sydney markets, isn’t it time the FFA looked to communities with established A-League bids and disappointed fans?
Canberra, Hobart and Wollongong could all have a club but I believe it is especially significant to have the nation’s capital involved in a national sporting competition.
While Canberra and Ivan Slavich’s bid team have constantly been misled and let down by the FFA, it is now time that they respected Canberra’s significance to national football and worked with the bid team to make Canberra the A-League’s next expansion club.
This should be with the current foundation members of ALeague4Canberra and other sponsorship money that currently totals four million dollars, to create a club owned by its members in a first for the A-League and football in Australia.
The FFA have said they would help put money forward to make a team happen at such short notice, so why don’t they put it towards a sustainable community legacy and not a spur-of-the-moment business glut.
I’m not an economist or a businessman so I don’t know how community ownership models should be put forward. The FFA and PFA should be getting together a community of likeminded professionals who can help design a platform for which new clubs can start and grow without the need for a clueless and erratic billionaire.
I believe community ownership is a reality of the future around the world and more needs to be done to make it that reality in Australia.
One of the biggest clubs in the world, Barcelona, is owned and run by its hundreds of thousands of members. In the UK, FC United of Manchester is a great example of what the community can achieve.
In Korea many clubs including Incheon United are community owned and it shows that for a newer league to grow, sustainable ownership by the community is a necessity.
The FFA have much work ahead of them if they are to survive football’s growing pains. We need a plan and a legacy of hard work and well thought-out decisions.
To start expanding with sustainable business plans and community ownership will give our next potential expansion club a lasting legacy. Now is the time to make football into a real national sport and to include our capital in a supposedly national league.
If Canberra can compete in the NRL, Super Rugby, W-League and many other national competitions, why aren’t they in the A-League, as a city with no summer sport competition?
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