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What does it say about our fixture list when Brisbane Roar play the two Sydney clubs, either side of an AFC Champions League playoff, within the space of a week?
The Roar can make it three wins from three tonight when they take on table-toppers Sydney FC, having thrashed Filipino side Global FC in front of a sparse crowd at Suncorp Stadium on Tuesday.
A win would see John Aloisi’s team edge closer to second-placed Melbourne Victory, but perhaps a bigger question is why the Roar are playing two of their biggest drawcards at home within a matter of days.
The ACL draw was made in mid-December, so maybe there’s an argument that FFA had to organise their scheduling around a then-unknown continental encounter.
Yet the ACL playoffs were played on the same weekend in 2016, and it doesn’t solve the logic of Brisbane playing the two Sydney sides at home back to back.
Is it any wonder only 3,500 fans turned up on Tuesday, or a slightly smaller than expected crowd of just over 13,000 was in the stands for the visit of Western Sydney last Saturday?
How fair is it to expect members, let alone casual fans, to shell out for three games of football in the space of six nights?
When FFA ruled out pushing back the Roar’s away game with Melbourne City at AAMI Park on February 11, The Courier-Mail’s resident football reporter Marco Monteverde revealed coach John Aloisi was considering fielding a weakened side in both the A-League and ACL.
Why wouldn’t they, when the Roar are set to face the might of Shanghai Shenhua at Hongkou on February 8 – the club of Carlos Tevez, Obafemi Martins and Fredy Guarin, among others?
FFA blamed the AFC for moving back the Roar’s playoff against Shenhua by 24 hours because it clashed with Shanghai SIPG’s encounter with Thai side Sukhothai across town, meaning the Roar won’t arrive in Melbourne until barely 24 hours before kick-off against City.
Yet the reality is it would have been far easier to simply push the Roar’s visit to Melbourne back a day to Sunday, February 12 – even if it impacted on rival A-League clubs.
All of which is now a moot point, because with broadcast schedules, stadium rosters and security arrangements now in place, it’s too late to do anything about the lopsided draw.
But it does raise the question: why is our fixture list so haphazard to begin with?
A-League boss Greg O’Rourke frequently references the difficulty of booking shared venues and the need to take into account broadcast requirements, but is it honestly so hard to create a home-away-home schedule across 27 rounds?
And if it really is that difficult, how about simply ensuring the same two clubs don’t play each other within a matter of weeks – as has happened frequently this season?
We now have the frankly ridiculous situation of the Melbourne derby being a hard sell, simply because the two clubs have played each other twice already this season – three times if you include the FFA Cup semi.
It leads to symptoms of fixture fatigue, whereby usually committed fans think twice about attending games or watching them on TV because they’ve seen the same fixture twenty times already.
Expansion can’t come soon enough – if only to produce one extra fixture per round – yet the powers that be continue to drag their feet on what is rapidly becoming a hugely frustrating issue.
And with the Mariners ‘hosting’ Adelaide in Canberra on Sunday, FFA has another ready-made fail on their hands that they signed off on.
It’s easy to criticise, but there really does need to be some more common sense around scheduling.
With clubs already complaining about a lack of input at head office, they hardly need yet another reason to threaten to form their own independent league.