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Time and time again on social media, comments along the lines of ‘Bring back the North Queensland Fury and Gold Coast United’ litter A-League related pages; die-hard fans of the now-defunct clubs begging for their team to be given another chance in Australia’s top flight.
I have recently heard the North Queensland Fury (now Northern Fury) are attracting regular crowds of over 1,000 people to their matches in the Queensland National Premier League and have designed a plan to try and have a National Youth League team by 2017 (I think) in an effort to forge their way back into the A-League.
It is great there are people in Northern Queensland who are so passionate about their cause, however how does the club plan on ensuring they don’t face the same fate it did last time it was in the A-League?
I had a soft spot for the Fury but the cruel, hard facts are that despite being a community club they averaged only a few thousand people at their home games and were financially unsustainable, even with the likes of Robbie Fowler in the side.
I was impressed when holidaying in far North Queensland with the community feel the club had, in particular noticing they featured prominently on the evening news each night, which makes me wonder how much more could be done to reach out to locals to support the team.
I do not believe there is potential for any growth on their previous A-League existance, especially if their on-field woes were to repeat themselves.
Focus from football fans in the country must be to expand the league in other locations.
Places such as Tasmania, Canberra and possibly Woolongong or Geelong should be the focus of the future expansion, as they have not yet had a team to call their own and have every chance of succeeding and winning over the general public.
While the calls for Gold Coast United to return are mainly from their bunch of die-hard supporters, the calls for North Queensland Fury to return seem to come from all corners of the A-League fan-base.
We need to let this franchise go and try and spread the word in new places of the country of the excitement this league has to offer.
You only need to look at Football Federation Tasmania’s Facebook page whenever the Melbourne Victory are in town to see the genuine excitement of Tasmania’s general public about the code and the potential fan-base that exists there.
Crowds of around six to seven thousand people (similar figure to a couple of existing A-League clubs) whenever the Victory have played there suggests there is genuine interest.
The annual A-League fixture the Wellington Phoenix play at Eden Park, Auckland, which generally draws 15-20 thousand people, also brings up calls for Auckland to have their own team.
The defunct New Zealand Knights were located in Auckland and we all know how many people they got to their games and their eventual fate. The Phoenix’s annual game is seen as a novelty to the general public, hence why the attendance is so great.
I don’t call the push for an Auckland team as nostalgia for the Knights but, rather, short memories of how dismal an Auckland-based team was.
Some may argue the annual game the Victory have been playing in Tasmania may be seen as the same novelty to Tasmania’s general public as Auckland’s annual game is.
However as Tasmania are yet to have a non-cricket professional sports team to call their own, the seven thousand people who turn up would not neglect an A-League team should one be put there, and the potential for growth is evident.
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