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“The day the west was won? Not today,” read Football Federation Australia CEO Ben Buckley’s statement announcing that Western Sydney will have a new club in the A-League next season. Not today, perhaps, but soon.
Any notion that round-ball football will now conquer the highly sought after Western Sydney region needs to be curtailed.
Yes, finally the A-League will have a representative in the justified heartland, where a string of Socceroos stars have been produced from the numerous and strong grassroots clubs scattered across the expansive region.
And there will finally be two clubs in the greater Sydney area – something that should have happened in the first round of expansion if not from the league’s formation.
It’s the right move, but at the right time?
Ultimately, though, this club, whatever it will be called, is being rushed. It needed to be to guarantee a 10-team competition next season, so crucial to the next television rights deal.
But relative to other start-up franchises, six months or so is such a small window to build the foundations of strong football club, let alone preparing it for its debut.
A club that is six months away from debuting in the A-League has no name, colours, logo, coach and so much more.
The FFA, who have overseen so many failures to launch a club in Western Sydney, from the Sydney Rovers franchise that was awarded a spot in the A-League but never found the funding to get off the ground to the numerous businessmen linked with bankrolling a club in the region that never materialised, is charged with getting this one right… in six months.
But it isn’t all up to them. The Western Sydney community, according to the FFA, will decide many of the key features of the club.
“From day one of its existence the new club will have a core focus on community engagement,” said FFA CEO Ben Buckley. “The community will have a say in the culture, colours, name and logo of the new entity and we will explore a model that would allow for community ownership.
“In partnership with Football NSW, FFA will ensure the club is truly integrated in community football, schools programs and the elite player pathway.
“We intend to build a model that will be driven by the passion of the football people in Sydney’s west.”
Funded by the FFA, with the help of $3 million for the redevelopment of the Football NSW headquarters at Valentine Sports Park, Glenwood, the governing body must nevertheless eventually find the funding within the community to sustain the club.
Given its own financial state and that of other clubs, the FFA cannot afford to pump millions into Western Sydney that it desperately needs for other areas of the game. After all, didn’t the FFA recently say it would stop bankrolling clubs, as it has done for Brisbane Roar, Adelaide United and more?
And in terms of accountability, it cannot own and fund the club for the long-term.
Future plans are to establish a community model of member investors as opposed to one owner. Or, in other words, avoid the Clive Palmer-syndrome. But putting a club in the fertile region isn’t enough to guarantee its success.
Community engagement, such an easy saying to throw around without truly grasping what it entails, is vital here and must be done right. But that will be more difficult than many in the wider football community realise.
The very qualities that make Western Sydney the heartland also present a challenge for the FFA.
The football family in the region already supports clubs that, according to them, were disenfranchised by the same governing body that is now setting up and running this new club. Think of Sydney United, Marconi, Blacktown, Sydney Olympic and more – unique, different entities with supporters whose loyalty to their clubs date back generations.
The great challenge the FFA faces is uniting all these different regions, supporters, ethnic groups and more into a unified brand that can build a bridge between “old soccer” and “new football” – an undoubted division that still exists. Community engagement, such a crucial ingredient in the success of any professional sporting club, is essential in this case given the breadth and complexities of the varied communities in play.
As former FFA Head of Communications Bonita Mersiades wrote yesterday, “Western Sydney is geographically spread, culturally diverse, disenfranchised from football’s elite in Darlinghurst and also very discerning and savvy football consumers.”
They need to be won over by a club that truly represents them all, not to mention consumers not already attached to Sydney FC.
With the western stretches of the city now belonging to the new franchise, Sydney FC can perhaps better attack the inner city suburbs in the battle for hearts and minds – a more concerted, centralised attack. And the rivalry and derbies could be great successes, akin to Melbourne’s. Remember, unlike Melbourne the two Sydney clubs will have far greater differentiation, certainly in terms of geography.
Remember, too, the competition with the other sporting codes.
The AFL is sparing no expense in order to turn Greater Western Sydney Giants into a viable and successful football club, beating the round-ball football into its supposed heartland.
With no strong ties to the region or division amongst former national league clubs, GWS Giants has the potential to unite Western Sydney in a way round-ball football and rugby league – the other code that claims the region as its heartland – cannot due to the preexisting sporting club divisions.
The task is, therefore, immense – in, I repeat, a six-month time-frame.
The governing body has let two expansion clubs die in as many seasons. Third time lucky? Or, hopefully, third time lucky through lessons learned and finally getting into the region where it should have been already.
This expansion move cannot fail. FFA cannot afford to turn its back on Western Sydney like it has to the Gold Coast and North Queensland. Fail to get this right and the “heartland” is lost in recesses of “old soccer”, where the former NSL and grassroots clubs won’t see national action until the FFA can unify the unofficial second tier with the A-League, be it through an FFA Cup competition or an even more unlikely second division.
The A-League needs a club representing such a fertile territory for the game; it needs the Sydney derby; it needs double the press and attention in Australia’s biggest city; and it needs five games per round for television and to avoid the wasteful bye. Ultimately, it needs an expansion franchise to work by getting the foundations of this club right, unlike its other failures.
Meanwhile, in all the excitement around Sydney, it’s important to reflect on the latest of those failures, the demise of Gold Coast United; their fate sealed by the birth of the Western Sydney franchise.
Even though there were glimmers of hope that Gold Coast United could survive post-Clive Palmer, with consortiums in the region supposedly ready to takeover the club, its fate was sealed long ago, perhaps well before Palmer’s spectacular attack on the governing body.
No matter whether Palmer was involved or not, the damage done to the Gold Coast United brand made the club untenable. And any new owner would inherit the deficiencies that plagued it – the high rental costs at Skilled Park and the lack of a realistic alternative, for one, not to mention the unsustainable supporter base.
Palmer and Gold Coast United’s expulsion opened the door nicely for the FFA to slot in Western Sydney – an opportunity it could not afford to miss – not this time. The talk of Gold Coast United being given a second chance or even Canberra thrown a franchise was exactly that; talk. The minute Palmer’s ownership was revoked was the minute Gold Coast United joined the ranks of New Zealand Knights, Sydney Rovers and North Queensland Fury on the A-League scrap heap.
Western Sydney cannot join them. But what stands in its way, in addition to the financial challenge that every other A-League clubs faces, is the very trait that sets it apart from the likes of the Gold Coast.
Consider the following quote from Gold Coast mayoral candidate and one of the leading members of the consortium bidding to save Gold Coast United, Tom Tate:
“The whole ‘we are football’ (A-League advertising slogan) thing must only apply if you’re part of the A-League. We’re now clearly in the same basket as clubs like Sydney Olympic, South Melbourne and Marconi.”
There’s that division that the A-League Western Sydney franchise must overcome. Fail to truly embrace the healthy grassroots football community in the region and there is no hope for a team in the heartland. Unite the Sydney Olympics and Marconis of the world behind this new A-League franchise and the fruits of the heartland will pay dividends. That’s the challenge that awaits the FFA.
The west may not have been won just yet, as Buckley said yesterday.
But it could be lost in the next hectic six months if the right plan of attack isn’t put in place.