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Ten ways to re-invigorate the A-League

Brett Wilson new author
Roar Rookie
27th November, 2015
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Bring back Alessandro! Step one of the master A-League plan. (Image: Peter McAlpine)
Brett Wilson new author
Roar Rookie
27th November, 2015
121
2027 Reads

There is a consensus that the A-League has stagnated recently with flat-lining crowds and TV ratings. Here’s 10 possible ideas to re-invigorate the A-League.

1. More star power – “Has been” International Marquees
Alessandro Del Piero is a household name in this country. He wasn’t before he arrived. However, once mainstream Australia saw his footballing pedigree, it collectively said “I want to watch this guy”.

And it did. At stadiums. On TV. In record numbers. And they bought shirts with his name. The expensive enterprise to bring Del Piero to Sydney paid off for the Sky Blues and turned the financial fortunes of the club around, albeit not immediately.

Since then there has been a shift in the players managers are bringing in as marquees and imports. Simply look at the quality and calibre of the import players at Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC. Look at Corona, Fornaroli, Broich, Jeggo, Ferreira, Leonardo among many.

Managers are bringing in quality players closer to their prime rather than ‘name’ players well past their best. For all his magic, Del Piero arrived in Australia on old legs and had developed some lazy habits.

Australian managers have preferred to import strikers who are not only clinical in front of goal, but will also track back to half way to disrupt the opposition. They are also less likely to be prima donnas and more likely to buy into team values.

However, mainstream Australia does not generally care about players coming out of clubs they could not locate on a world map. They want stars from the big European Leagues.

How big would it be for the game in Australia if Steven Gerrard or a player of his ilk kitted up for an A-League club? It would be like the Del Piero buzz all over again, but from a higher baseline.

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The crowds and ratings would go through the roof. Most Liverpool fans would be expected to attend at least one match to watch one of their heroes. Football would appear on the sports back page for the right reasons (and not a hack writing a controversial story every 2-3 months to keep her profile).

There would be significant interest in the TV rights. Based on current numbers, no broadcaster is going to look at significantly beating the current $40 million a season arrangement, based on audiences in the range of 60,000 per match on Foxtel and 140,000 for the simulcast Friday night match.

Who cares if the superstar ends up at Sydney FC or Melbourne Victory, if those clubs are willing to pay the bulk of the hefty wage bill. If a player like Gerrard went to Victory, the other clubs would benefit because the likes of Berisha, Kostarousis, Finkler and co would be required to be dispersed around the league to make way.

Other clubs would also benefit from huge home crowds when the star came to town. If he went to Adelaide, most Liverpool fans might even contemplate buying a red Adelaide shirt with his name on the back. The increased exposure would prompt sponsors to put in more money as they could expect a better return on their investment.

Given Manchester City’s ownership of Melbourne City, some of the ageing stars could be brought down under. David Villa could do another guest stint along Pirlo and Frank Lampard.

Imagine Besart Berisha confronting Chelsea villain and Perth defender John Terry. Imagine Wayne Rooney doing a guest stint in Brisbane or Newcastle. Imagine 20,000 at Pirtek Stadium or Allianz doing the Kolo Yaya Toure dance.

Look at kids at football training. Look at the shirts they wear. They are wearing the shirts of European teams rather than local teams.

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The end of season tours by European giants draw huge crowds, ratings and interest. Its all about star power.

While the general quality of imports in the A-League is improving, the star power is virtually non-existent. This needs to change.

Spending $2m on a player to add $20m annually to the TV deal makes sense. If the next TV deal does not significantly improve for the FFA, we might end up with a league with four teams as the rest go to the wall. Most clubs need a significant increase in their grants from TV money to go even close to breaking even.

2. Ditch the Nix
Sorry, I might be swimming against the tide of public opinion, but a team based out of Wellington does not offer much. Fox TV numbers are generally down for Nix matches, they have no sizeable travelling fan-base and there is no star power.

Worse still, there is next to negligible interest in them in New Zealand. They play at the same stadium as the Hurricanes rugby team, who regularly draw 15-20,000 for home matches. The Nix have a solid fan-base of 6,000 who regularly turn up, but not much else.

Usually less than 20,000 watch the Nix on Sky Sports throughout New Zealand.

Yes, they have a good manager, good players and they play good football. Yes, they have good owners who run a solid operation, but they are not world beaters. They do not own and have not seriously challenged for silverware.

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Put Ernie Merrick in charge of the mooted Southern Sydney/NSW team. Offer all current Nix players like-for-like contracts with the new club (akin to what was done for Newcastle players when the FFA took over). Offer the current owners an opportunity to invest in the new franchise if they want to.

Nix version 2 operating in Southern Sydney/NSW will be far more successful than the New Zealand Knights version 2. There are numerous cases in US sport where major professional teams are moved from a poor performing city to another city.

Put simply, Wellington is not a great market. The Nix’s attendances are on par with the Wellington Lions in the New Zealand provincial rugby competition. If the local rugby team only draws about 7,000 in rugby mad New Zealand, what chance does a football team have?

Base the Southern NSW team near Wollongong, have them play the odd match in Canberra and Cronulla as well (like the Wanderers who make occasional treks to Penrith and Campbelltown).

The Southern Wolves (or whatever you want to call them) would have a catchment area from Captain Cook bridge to Bega and down through the ACT to Albury.

Basing them at Wollongong would be less offensive to Sydney FC and would be less likely to eat into their fan-base. Including a southern Sydney catchment area will reduce the problems that would typically confront a regional club given the FFA’s research that cities need to have a population of 500,000 to sustain a successful football outfit.

While you are at it, have the Jets connect more with Northern NSW regions such as Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, Tamworth and Armidale, and have the Mariners foster their own small backyard as well as the vast area west of the Blue Mountains, including towns like Orange where they took a trial match earlier this year.

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Chris Harold Perth Glory

3. More star power – Premium Australians
While A-League TV ratings have stagnated, the audience of the Socceroos continues to grow. Tim Cahill is arguably the best Australian player to have been capped for his country.

He needs to be brought home eventually to play a season or two in the A-League. Put him out front of a new franchise or a typically struggling franchise like the Mariners, give him partial ownership if you have to, just get him back here.

Older Socceroo stars should play out their later years in Australia. But let’s bring them back when they are 32, not 35. A player like Mark Bresciano would have been a huge hit in the A-League.

Few would argue that Aaron Mooy has been the best Australian player in the A-League this season. Matt McKay and Jamie McLaren have not been far behind. Many players of this ilk will soon be plying their trade in Europe. T

here has to be a regular flow of Socceroo quality players in and out of the league. If guys like Adam Taggart can’t get a start abroad, bring them home in the January transfer window to get 10 or so games under their belt so that they can convince a European club to play them each week.

4. Less rounds
The A-League season is too long. It contains too many ‘dud’ matches involving also-ran teams with little star power.

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Next year, the Newcastle Jets will take on the Perth Glory three times in 10 weeks. Apart from the supporters of both teams, and perhaps a few others who are depending on a result to assist their under performing team, who will care?

It would be surprising if the TV ratings exceeded 60,000 for any of these matches, particularly given the relatively unfriendly time slots given to them.

The current model of playing each team three times is repetitive. I would propose that each side plays each other side twice, on a home-and-away basis. This would make up 18 rounds. Then group the teams into two divisions, a NSW division containing five teams (including the new Southern franchise) and another division with the rest of the clubs.

Those inter division teams would play off over a further four matches, so you would still get three Sydney derbies, three Melbourne derbies and three F3 derbies a season.

Adelaide would also play rivals such as the Victory and the Glory three times. Then schedule one more match containing a cross-over match between divisions.

Sydney FC could play the Victory, the Wanderers could play against City and Brisbane could be matched up against the Mariners in a grand final replay. This would permit the Big Blue still to be played three teams in a season. Instead of the current allocation of 14 and 13 home matches a season, this would reduce to 12 and 11 matches. With less games, the crowd aggregate may not drop as averages would be expected to improve.

Yes, this would reduce the integrity of the competition somewhat, because each team will not play all other teams three times. But it is not even at the moment, because home ground advantage is not evenly shared each season. Further, the draw is not conducted in three rounds. For instance, Sydney and Newcastle complete their three matches against each other before Newcastle play Perth once.

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As such, the way the draw is currently structured, teams might face other teams over a short period while the other team is facing injury concerns.

A look at the competition ladder over the past few seasons suggests taking away a few rounds will not harm the competition.

By the time that you get to about five weeks to go, two teams are normally gone and battling out the wooden spoon, one team is usually a mathematical chance, and teams 5, 6 and 7 are usually locked into some sort of battle, while at the top end, there are usually a couple of pivotal games which will decide the Plate or home ground advantage in the finals. With less rounds, teams will be “alive” for longer.

Splitting the competition into divisions can also be made to co-ordinate double headers for far travelling teams.

For instance, each season either Perth or Brisbane will be forced to make two trips across the Nullarbor to play the other. Why not schedule matches, particularly around public holidays, where the two teams play in the same city, say twice in 4-5 days? A doomsday double.

Last year, the Roar hosted the Victory twice in a short timespan due to a washout. Arguably the second match up between the teams was better because neither had to travel in between, and they had a feel for the other team after the first match.

This could also assist in drawing travelling fans. Go from Melbourne to Perth for say five days, see your team play twice, see the city. Indeed the away teams could host events for its travelling fans.

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While the team’s accommodation costs would increase, flight costs would half. Players would have better recovery (albeit away from their usual environs).

More NSW matches means that teams such as the Wanderers will host six matches against NSW opposition and will have to travel to six NSW venues.

This gives the opportunity of offering travelling memberships for half the away matches during the season. If the Wanderers were allocated 12 homes games for a season, their travelling supporters could see 18 matches in total (out of 23 matches) without having to get on a plane (and having to attempt to get their flares through airport security!).

If members have already purchased an away bay season ticket, they would be more likely to attend games where adverse weather is expected.

The NSW teams would play off in 30 out of the 105 regular season games of the season in a 23-round competition. That’s 30 games where the travelling support would be expected to be improved over the league average.

The RBB and the Cove support would be expected to fill bay or two at each away match involving their team in NSW, particularly if travelling away was more of a habit rather than a one off occurrence.

Besart Berisha of Melbourne Victory takes on Michael Beauchamp of Western Sydney Wanderers

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5. Make more of other sports and cultural events
The Boxing Day cricket Test is one of the biggest days on the Australian sporting calendar and eyes are fixated upon Melbourne.

Yet, no football will be played in Melbourne that day. Instead, Melbourne Victory will host a match commencing at 5pm on Sunday the 27th of December. The cricket will normally be played until about 6.30pm. It would have been perfect for Victory to play a 7pm match so that it could gather a walk up crowd from next door.

Victory will be competing with the drop of wickets at Australia’s sports mecca. Better still, allocate City a home game while the Melbourne cricket Test is on. Cricket goers could be offered a pre-paid $10 ticket to come a watch the football after a big day at the ‘G. Sydney FC do not host a match in Moore Park during the Sydney New Years cricket Test.

The Barmy Army will be back in a couple of years. Let’s put A-League matches on around the country so that they can sing to their hearts content after a day of getting whopped at the cricket. Even better, they could see Steven Gerrard or Didier Drogba play for one last time.

What’s stopping the Mariners from playing a match in Bathurst while the big car races are on? Or Perth from hosting a match in Hobart following the Sydney to Hobart yacht race?

Or the Jets hosting a match in Tamworth during the Country Music Festival. Instead of competing against other sports and events, leverage off them. Strategically place matches around, but not directly in competition with, the V8 series, Formula 1, cricket, horse racing carnivals and the like.

The A-League leverages Melbourne Cup week well, but there remains significant work to do on scheduling around other events.

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6. Stadium Double Headers
With memberships being a much bigger source of revenue than gate receipts, clubs should be encouraged to play double headers. The typical case against double headers is how to split the gate.

But given the gate would be constituted by relatively few travelling fans, there is not much to split. A further concern regarding playing double headers is having insufficient space for corporates.

However, modern stadia in Sydney and Melbourne have an abundance of corporate space. For instance, Sydney and the Wanderers could both host on the same day at ANZ.

City and Victory could do likewise at Etihad. Further, typically poor drawing away teams such as the Jets and Mariners could feature in double headers. Sydney could host Newcastle and the Wanderers could host the Mariners.

It would be expected that the Sydney fans would hang around to attempt to out sing the Wanderers and the Mariners travelling fans (all 30 of them!) would arrive early to watch their fierce rivals, the Jets, hopefully fail. Both of these games would be expected to net a live audience of about 30,000 at ANZ Stadium, as opposed to a likely viewing audience of 12,000 at each of Allianz and Pirtek.

It also needs to be borne in mind that both the Wanderers and Sky Blues are likely to be ‘gypies’ over the next few years as NSW Stadiums and demolished and rebuilt. ANZ is the logical venue to host, but its cavernous nature with only 10,000 fans present is not a good advertisement for any code.

While it would be logical for the Wanderers to take their smaller matches to a venue like Penrith, the Sky Blues might need to look at outdated grounds like Kogarah or Leichhardt with fairly limited corporate facilities.

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Its all about generating atmosphere. I would pay good money to see the Sydney derby or the Melbourne derby get played every week. The football on the pitch would likely be a secondary consideration to the atmosphere.

7. Play marquee matches on free-to-air

Clubs like Sydney FC prefer to host on Saturday nights. This is because they struggle to draw crowds on a Friday night due to Sydney traffic. This year, they will only feature three times on SBS. This is ridiculous. This is the club that is attempting to take the Victory’s mantle as the strongest club in the league on and off the field.

The FFA needs to let SBS broadcast these Saturday night match of the rounds. Put the Sydney and Melbourne derbies on free-to-air, together with Big Blues, F3 Derbies, Melbourne-Adelaide duels, Western derbies, double headers. With a new NSW team, there is the possibility of four more derbies (each played three times).

Foxtel has a reach of only 30% of Australian households. To get to the mainstream, the bigger matches need to be on free-to-air. The FFA (correctly) speak about fishing where the fish are, but currently its best matches are shown on the fish bowl that only 30% of Australians get to see, rather than another fish bowl that every household has.

While we are at it, the FFA needs to stop criticising its free-to-air broadcast partner half way through the current deal. It’s not a good look for any prospective partners. F

urther, if the broadcaster does not want to showcase football on its main free-to-air channel, give them matches that will give them ratings that will make that decision look stupid rather than justify that decision.

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Apart from the first two weeks of this year’s competition, less than 60,000 have watched SBS Friday night coverage. Those numbers simply don’t justify being on the main channel.

8. Promotion and relegation
With good reason, the FFA likes to promote the ‘magic of the Cup’ in relation to the highly successful FFA Cup competition. But why not also bring in the second leg of the underdog equation, promotion and relegation?

There is a good reason why the FFA don’t really want relegation. The second tier of clubs generally are simply not professional sporting bodies resourced with appropriate teams of full time professionals needed.

But the notion of promotion is perhaps more romantic than the actual deed itself. It’s the dream that people want. They don’t necessarily want to wake up to it.

So why not have a mechanism for the best-performed team in the national NPL to play off against the bottom placed A-League team?

The bottom A-League club could play off against the top national NPL club over two legs in two stages. The NPL club would have to win both stages to gain promotion. No penalty shootout. A drawn stage and the incumbent stays up.

If the match was played at the end of the regular A-League season, in say April or May, there would simply be insufficient time for the NPL club to gear up in time for the following season starting in October.

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So here’s how it could work. Stage 1 is played in May over two home-and-away legs concurrently with, or shortly after the A-League finals. If the A-League side wins Stage 1, the promotion dream is over, and there is no talk of promotion until the following April when the subsequent NPL winners take on the subsequent A-League wooden spooners.

However, if the NPL team wins Stage 1, it progresses to Stage 2, where there is a further two match tie to take place in September. If the NPL team wins that stage, it will be promoted for the following season (starting in the subsequent October), so there will be 12 months to get up and running.

If the NPL loses Stage 2, the promotion dream is over. Equally the bottom A-League team is on risk from May onwards that it may be relegated at the end of the following A-League season so appropriate arrangements can be made for contracts, staff and the like.

It would be expected that the promotion dream will die off with a wimper in May most years. However, the FFA Cup has shown that upsets can and do happen. The May contests would resemble a ‘non-title fight’. But if the NPL team was good enough to surprise and win the first Stage, there would be a four-month build up to the next Stage, where the incumbent A-League team will have to ‘put the title on the line’.

If the NPL team fails, it has a story akin to so many Socceroo World Cup qualification bids before 2006. But if the NPL team wins both Stages, few could argue that they deserve to be promoted, and the four month build up will lead to bandwagons of support for the little guy who succeeded in the David versus Goliath battle.

The A-League club could hardly complain if it was relegated. While the risk of surprise is evident in Stage 1, the incumbent would have the benefit of a four month build up so can’t complain if its pants are pulled down a second time.

Are the odds stacked against the underdog? Yes, but that’s the beauty of it. Adopting a model like this would go a long way towards repairing the wounds between ‘Old Soccer’ and New Football’. Clubs like South Melbourne might just get their chance to compete in the top flight.

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9. Ditch 5pm kick offs
Top flight football in this country is now a summer sport. Why then are we kicking off matches in the heat at 5pm on most Saturdays and Sundays? It is not pleasant to sit in the sun and watch. It is uncomfortable for the players and potentially dangerous when the mercury reaches 36 degrees. Worse still, people are often still coming home from kids sport, work or doing chores around the house at 5pm. There are simply not people in front of their TVs at that time.

Saturday afternoon football is a weak timeslot for all football codes in this country. AFL and NRL matches played in Saturday afternoon timeslots usually suffer the worst crowds and ratings. A-League ratings are even worse. Games in these timeslots are also competing against Test cricket, V8 racing, horse racing, all of which generally end at around 6pm.

Why not play a Saturday night double header with games at 7pm and 9pm (or 6.30pm and 8.30pm)? With time differences the late games can be played in Perth (6pm local kick off – three hours behind AEDST) and Brisbane (8pm local kick off – 1 hour behind AEDST, and also less humid) on alternating weekends.

Throw in the odd double header from the same venue to break up the monotony of the same teams playing the late game each week (ie like the Broncos on a Friday night in the NRL).

Later timing provides a lead in to Premier League matches. It is hard to imagine that Fox Sports will not gain the rights to broadcast one or two live games around midnight on a Saturday night. SBS could simulcast the 7pm match, have a post game wrap up, and then into the saucy movie of the night.

Further, the same teams are being given the same dead timeslots. For instance, it is said that the Jets do not rate well on TV, but putting the majority of their home matches at 5.15pm on a Saturday and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For as long as Joel Griffiths and John Hutchinson are living in Newcastle and Gosford respectively, the F3 Derby will always offer something (even if the competing teams are having average seasons). The Mariners and Nix are yet to be seen on free-to-air this year and are frequently victims of poor time slots. Given the Phoenix are in a different time zone, this is poor scheduling.

10. Magic Round

The FFA needs to cash in on the Socceroos’ popularity. While A-League crowds and ratings are down, the position is opposite for the Socceroos.

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Turn a home qualification match into an event once a year. For instance, the Socceroos could host a World Cup or Asian Cup qualification match in a city such as Canberra on a Thursday night. An A-League round could be hosted in that city (and perhaps one nearby, ie Goulburn, Albury, Yass) over the following weekend.

Take W-League matches and Y-League matches there too. Host some fan events, and have football take over a city in which it does not usually occupy for a weekend. Spread it around. Canberra, Gold Coast, Cairns, Townsville, Hobart, Ballarat or Alice Springs.

The A-League has made the mainstream. But more needs to be done for it to become a major player and compete with the ‘metrics’ achieved by AFL, NRL and Super Rugby.

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