The Roar
The Roar

Dugald Massey

Roar Guru

Joined February 2011

53.4k

Views

31

Published

99

Comments

Published

Comments

Yes, puberty is hell isn’t it. Chin up DJ, it’ll pass.

Maybe football fans don't hate football after all

That’s the thing about the future, Rusty – we always get there but when we do we’re old, infirm and infinitely wiser but you can’t go back.

You do realise I was lobbying for the A-League back in 1975? They shouted me down for being negative and eventually went with their ill-conceived B-league instead.

There’s probably a lesson in there for someone but I’m not sure if it’s for me or you.

No, you’re right. I should have been much more negative then than I was and now we’d be where you reckon we’re gonna be circa 2050 with attendances in their billions. My mistake.

For my crimes I sentence you to a repetition of history. In 2050 you will be lecturing know-all what-about-meeee kids that it ain’t really all about them and their unshakeable conviction that it is damages and divides the game’s culture and gets them the opposite response to the one they want, and that if they keep it up you’ll sentence them to doing what you’re doing then in 2090.

As for turning a blind eye to what’s actually going now and spinning it up, that’s probably a good thing or politicians wouldn’t do it and they wouldn’t respected in the community as they are. Historically Australians have admired a man determined to tell only one side of the story. They enjoy the outcomes too.

That said, I do think we have to gild the lily from time to time to keep the vibe positive. I’m not a religious man so I’m saving up to get my head frozen.

P.S. On a uglier note, my PA just called and apparently designer labels look to The Roar for inspiration and FKUC wants my permission to run off a ten million “It’s called soccer: I know karate” T-shirts for the Asia-Pacific market.

I’m not sure what to make of it.

Maybe football fans don't hate football after all

And that’s my point, Fuss. You say the issue is getting the juniors and families to embrace HAL in the summer months when they’ve now got the state federations saying, no, these days it’s a full-time 12-month commitment and you need to embrace playing football in the summer months.

But you probably think I’m making that up because you remember what it was like and that memory hasn’t changed so obviously nothing’s changed here since Baggio missed except we scrapped the NSL for the A-League and qualified for the WC. Baan and Burger are figments of our imaginations.

There’s no need for you to to be feeling so rejected, Fuss. The grassroots are universally grateful to every HAL-supporter who’s spilled bodily fluids for them. They know they have a moral obligation to square off one day, as do we. The bloodsucking parasites owe us big time.

That should work.

Maybe football fans don't hate football after all

That’s exactly the response I was anticipating, DJ – one from supporter who is so willing to spread BS around to make the game look good that all they succeed in is making football look bad for tolerating compulsive liars. So congratulations, you’ve got all the prerequisites to apply for a media job with a FF.

After folks have followed the link you’ve provided there that demonstrates conclusively how cheap football is to play in NSW, they can drop on over to Bonnyrigg with their $56.90 in hand and learn that there’s a $200 deposit before a kid can even train. Weird, eh?

http://www.bonnyriggfc.com.au/news/latest-news

After that, they can follow some of these other links and try to reconcile them with your extremely valuable contributions to this discussion ….

http://monashfc.com.au/index.php/2012-02-01-07-54-54/ssf-under-5-7

http://www.sportingpulse.com/club_info.cgi?c=1-8746-124191-0-0&sID=238814

http://www.essendonroyals.com.au/registration.html

http://www.smfc.com.au/news/1131/smfc-junior-development-programme/

http://www.melbourneknights.com.au/juniors/

Of course, you’ll have to ring SMJFC and Knights for their fees. Get back to us with the figures when you’ve got picked yourself up off the floor.

Spin doctors only dig the FFA's hole deeper

Only a thousand bucks in Adelaide, Phil?

In Sydney they’re said to be shelling out two or three grand and NSW is delivering nearly as many top young players as all of Mt Gambier.

That aside, it must lift your spirits no end seeing A-League supporters discussing the issue and its implications with the maturity they do. They’re probably right though. If feigning ignorance and spinning the issues are good for football, the Socceroos are monty to bring the WC back from Brazil.

One day someone around football is going to actually read the National Curriculum and they’ll see this bit, which was drafted about five years ago when things were a lot better than they are now fees-wise:

“Across the world, football is very easy accessible for every child, rich or poor. This is one of the main reasons why it has become the world’s game; you only need a ball, even if it is one made of rags. Traditionally the talented children have often come from a lower socioeconomic environment.

“In Australia however, football is becoming an expensive sport and therefore not affordable for some families. When a child is identified as being talented and selected for participation in State and National Championships the threshold becomes even higher because of the ‘user pays’ system. Sometimes this is exacerbated by distance from the main football centres.

“Therefore, the assumption is justifiable that this situation causes a substantial loss of potential talent.

“It is the (moral) responsibility of the football community to level this barrier and make football accessible for every child.”

Football doesn’t much like taking on board expert advice though – not even the expert advice it gives itself.

Spin doctors only dig the FFA's hole deeper

1. You could say the same of Lowy. Frank obviously has the ear of government so why bother pumping millions into the Lowy Institute trying to influence government policies?

Governments respond to policy arguments, not outstretched hands at press conferences or social media. Lowy knows that, as do those funding the Australia Institute, the Sydney Institute and the Institute of Public Affairs – they generate the public discussions that ultimately effect the changes they’re after.

Football’s argument for receiving cash from governments is that it’s an Olympic sport, which is pretty flimsy when the money isn’t actually quarantined to the under-23s. Will it stand up to heavy scrutiny from Clive’s think tank? I don’t know.

2. Yep, there’s huge amounts of government money being splurged on all sorts of crazed ideas. Down here in Victoria we sling Bernie Ecclestone $50 million a year at the same time as kids with ABIs are stuck in nursing homes because the government says it can’t possibly afford the $500 bucks extra a month it costs to get them into appropriate accommodation.

Football would be fine if it were Football versus Ecclestone. How football’s middle-class welfare arguments go against the needs of kids stuck in nursing homes is probably a different question.

3. Yes, I saw that discussion and that’s why I don’t seek tax advice in The Roar’s comments section. Non-profit community sporting bodies are tax exempt but their disbursement are not. Referees aside, every cent that’s outlaid on the services of coaches, players and club “volunteers” is taxable income under the Tax Act and must be declared.

Maybe it is all declared? Fair enough. As they say, if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to worry about.

So why are so many clubs running two sets of books and paying out money in brown paper bags rather than white envelopes with payslips. Why are they not issuing group certificates?

I’ve been asking around for ten years and the answer is always the same: Everyone else is doing it, so you know …

I can understand football supporters being upset at some fly-by making wild accusations as these about football’s business model, just like I understood it exactly twelve months ago when I informed Roar readers that some A-League club owners were so upset with FFA’s handling of their league that they were considering their positions. That too was dismissed with the standard “what drug’s he on” nonsense you see here.

After 130 years of it, you get used to football diehards mindlessly mouthing off just before they walk smack bang into yet another closed door.

Clive Palmer might be mad, but he's not stupid

No.

Funding blues, red herrings and greenhorns

My one good eye detects a very, very perceptive man who reads much between the lines. Whether it is actually there, well that is a whole other question.

You’re right though. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean no one is out to get you.

Arbib, Lowy know their mushrooms

I’m on the record as saying Brendan Schwab is one of the few around with an overview of how the game works who hasn’t got a debt to some part of clubland or the other.

To lift its game in the short-term, FFA probably needs to stop its chairman making it up as he goes along and get him on message for the next four years leading up to the Asia Cup.

For the long term, to save FFA being taken over by some of the absolute wallies who are waiting in the wings for Lowy to leave, the states’ electoral structure probably needs to be more like the RACV/RACQ’s or whatever they call the various automobile clubs across the states.

Using cars clubs as an example, how would those organisations go if car owners were denied the vote because it was too hard to poll them all and the governors were just made accountable to, say, petrol station or car wash proprietors? After all, if car owners didn’t wholeheartedly agree with the proprietors’ politics and pricing policies, they wouldn’t go there would they?

That’s the, um, common sense principles football’s voting structures are based on. ‘Clubs’ have successfully argued that their aims are the same as their players, coaches and supporters so it’s logical for clubs to decide who the decision makers ought be and have the whiphand over them.

I’d say that’s fundamentally misrepresenting the nature of the relationship between players and coaches and clubs, and that it would be a glaringly obvious misrepresentation to anyone who has the faintest idea about how football clubs actually work.

Arbib, Lowy know their mushrooms

If it’s an important point, at least make it with due care. “Page not found” or articles about AFL clubs putting their hands out to the AFL don’t shed a lot of light on the funding debate.

Arbib, Lowy know their mushrooms

Lowy and the FFA have done a lot to improve the game since they took over.

Arbib, Lowy know their mushrooms

Well, some wizened heads around the grassroots are saying the football federations have lost their way since the career sports administrators moved in on football and carved the games various activities up into ‘business units’.

As we’ve seen, the cost of that can be, say, juniors shelling out many thousands of dollars for the privilege of representing their state or not playing at all and being replaced by a less talented player with more money.

That might offend the sensibilities of football people who tend to see development as meaning the most talented players being selected rather than the best players from the kinds of families with the financial capacity to help ‘expand the industry’ but it makes perfect sense to someone whose continued employment involves achieving certain revenue goals before June 30.

But who am I to accuse the sportsbiz industry of putting job creation for other sportsbiz professionals ahead of a particular sports own goals? That would be nothing more than a wild unsubstantiated allegation, which is why I’m not making it.

Arbib, Lowy know their mushrooms

The North Korea reference wasn’t really about football.

As for Lowy getting Oz out of Oceania into Asia, it’s a huge feather in his cap. I just wish he’d capitalise on that by getting over his WC fixation and making sure Asia 2015 is a tournament for the ages like the Asia Cup was this year. It really doesn’t help that cause, his obsessing over 2022 as if that was the making or breaking of Oz football.

Arbib, Lowy know their mushrooms

Trouble is he put it out there and then proceeded to forget all about it until now and all that time junior fees have continued to increase.

But you’re right RC, Fossie has been onto it previously and I neglected to say that. Apologies.

Schwab should lead football from the top

Not sure why it matters Bondy — if my arguments have merit or otherwise it’ll be found in the articles, not my CV.

You’re not alone though being more concerned about who’s talking than what is being said — I’ve just been looking at Fossie’s piece on TWG on junior club fees and he’s getting about 90% support for the notion that HAL is stuffed unless the situation changes.

Whenever I’ve raised that issue in here we’ve got a somewhat different response — anti-HAL, anti-sokkah, AFL fan, just making it all up etc etc.

Pity I’m no Socceroo or high junior fees would have been addressed about five years ago when I first started banging on about them.

Anyway, the deaf ears and blind eyes aren’t my problem, that’s one for football supporters to ponder. Do they really think they can make football better by simply shooting the messenger and denying inconvenient truths?

What I will say background-wise is that there are three distinct ‘branches’ of Australian domestic soccer, HAL, the state leagues and juniors, and I would recommend football supporters familiarise themselves with the business models of the three tiers so they can begin to appreciate that their survival and success is inter-dependent.

Brendan Schwab is an important player because he’s one of the precious few insiders with the faintest idea about how the entire machine works — most with a vested interest only look after their particular patch as if the various elements all work independently and that approach makes everyone’s job so much harder.

That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of people around who know what’s going on but their insider status get revoked pretty quickly when they start calling for changes and threatening the feathery nests of those leeching off the present mess.

It’s a funny old game. I’ve received late-night threatening calls from “old soccer” for being seen to be associated with “new football” and when I concluded new football was no better and probably worse than old soccer, I’ve had “new football” on the blower after midnight. Lovely people, all of them.

What do you think is going on there, Bondy?

That’s the trouble with corruption — stolen money and unearned privileges is small beer next next to the damage the secrecy and cover ups cause.

Schwab should lead football from the top

Hi again TC,

So far as financial barriers to participation go, the risk is all football’s — it’s no skin off anyone else’s nose.

Tennis Australia had this debate about 15 years ago and it went with the coaches’ point of view — get the participants to pay top dollar for their coaching and they’d deliver us champions.

That didn’t work because to be in ‘the system’ cost a small fortune and all that’s left around elite junior tennis these days are kids from already financially comfortable families so the talent pool so much shallower and now the whole sport is struggling, with Tennis Australia resorting to counting kids in one-off clinics and in-school programs as ‘registered participants’ to keep up its ASC funding.

FFA’s national curriculum says “traditionally the most talented players have often come from a lower socio-economic environment. …. Therefore, the assumption is justifiable that this situation causes a substantial loss of potential talent.”

FFA aren’t being bleeding hearts — the fine motor skills and muscle memory for football take ages to develop and a kid to who a football is a luxury tends to spend more time developing those skills than kids who who spend 20 hours a week on their X-box etc.

Craig Foster weighed in today with his take on the situation
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/craig-foster/blog/1059837/The-high-cost-of-playing-the-game-we-love

Schwab should lead football from the top

Yep, TC, the by-words these days early talent identification and ‘pathways’.

Football isn’t alone on that, it’s just following the same tried-and-failed AIS model our other Olympic sports follow.

The AIS model makes sense for sports here that don’t have many participants. Slinging $millions at a handful of participants on AIS scholarships under world-class coaches can beat the system and pick up medals in sports we don’t actually play here.

It’s harder to beat the system in mass-participation sports though where the depth of the talent pool counts more than anything else. Introducing early-talent ID and elite-pathway model into sports with already large participation jacks up their costs, reduces participation and kills of any chance that sport has of finding those one-in-10k players who might be world-beaters.

Read all about it in David Crawford’s “Future of Sport” — it’s got all the numbers, canvasses all the alternatives and permutations and where they’ll take us. As it points out, pumping money into elite sport actually damages the grassroots. Is that what sports with grassroots really want?

The route we’ve chosen — not my choice, I wrote letters of protest to the ASC — is one that pumps govt money into elite soccer and jacks up grassroots participation costs and — Crawford says, not me — is all good news for the AFL and the NRL.

Schwab should lead football from the top

Hi Wookie,

Some say its the AFL and NRL’s media rights that explain the difference but that falls apart as soon as we throw numbers at it.

If there are 400,000 kids playing soccer (some say there is double that) and we want FFA’s next media rights deal to knock $300 off each one’s participation costs, that’s, er, $120 million a year.

Those are conservative figures, of course. The fee gap is greater than $300 and some say there are nearly a million playing football in Australia.

Also, soccer juniors in so-called ‘talented player programs’ (about 10,000 nationally, it’s a pretty loose definition) are up for thousands of dollars each — up to $6k for state reps.

Last I heard, and it was from an unreliable source, the AFL was chipping in about $30 million annually to grassroots footy.

Can Ben Buckley pull of a media deal that delivers $150-200 million a year to the grassroots? Hmmmm.

It’s a lot of money but that’s what the participants are presently chipping in and about two-thirds of it goes into the black economy that’s been around soccer clubs forever — they used to fiddle the books on player transfer fees — ask Fozzie, Kimon, Filan, they got done over over like everyone did in their day — but now that’s been curtailed and clubs don’t win Tatts for flogging off players, club officials feel obliged to skin every kid who comes in their door lest their lifestyles suffer.

Nope, the best I can come up with is junior fees being based on a percentage of Lionel Messi’s contract — it’s whatever the market will bear.

The high fees partially explain the drop-out rate from u-13s onward — huge fees make sense if you’re Lionel Messi and you’ll get them back a million-fold, but the second a kid and/or his parents work out he’s not good enough to play professionally, they sensibly go and spend that fortune elsewhere and leave soccer to the trainee pros.

Schwab should lead football from the top

Hi TC,

Aussie Rules and NRL dominating the grassroots in the future isn’t my analysis, it’s Crawford’s (The report was “The Future of Sport in Australia” — worth a look.)

I’m interested to know where you got the idea that soccer’s grassroots are ‘double that of the other two combined’.

I’m open to new information but I think you can book that one up to an urban myth because unless there’s nearly a million registered footballers in Australia it doesn’t check out.

In fact there’s about half a million registered players in Australia — 540,000 according to FFA — with between two-thirds and three-quarters of them juniors. (In Victoria it’s about 77% juniors but we have to cut the other states some slack — they’ve have to be poisoning their water bottles to have Victoria’s drop out rate)

At Victoria’s extra-high ratio of juniors, we’d be looking at about 400,000 kids in soccer.

Double the other two combined? That means there are just 200,000 kids nationally plugged into footy and league combined.

Victoria alone has over 150,000 juniors in Aussie Rules.

We don’t even have to bother toting up the Aussie Rules figures from all the other states let alone the league figures from NSW and Qld to see that something ain’t quite right.

Even the 400,000 junior football registrations sound a bit fanciful. Victoria had just under 40,000 registered juniors last year and NSW about 100,000 (I believe) — which leaves another 260,000 juniors to come from the remaining states.

Introducing some sobriety into numbers, about a month ago Bonita Mersiades was on the radio saying that according to the same sets of figures that said soccer’s ‘lead’ over Aussie Rules a few years back of nearly 200k had been pared to 25-30,000 at present.

I’ve scoured the joint trying to find where those figures came from but I can’t find the old ones with the 200k lead let alone the new ones she was talking about.

Any assistance or directions greatly appreciated because the the only thing I have to go by is first-hand experience at junior clubs and there has been drop out rate the last few years — we’re bursting at the seams with sub-juniors but that’s been the story every year since 2004. The bulge at the bottom still hasn’t translated into any more teams being entered at levels beyond the under-14s when it should have shown up in senior registrations by now.

Happens with other sports too but to a lesser degree, and they pick up a few late starters as well and a lot of them probably football’s refugees — footy and league’s skill sets accommodate ex-soccer players but the muscle memory needed to play even ordinary soccer makes code-switching a bit of a one-way street.

Can Arbib make us the Barcelona of governance?

I’ve gone bald trying to work out what the real criteria are for ASC funding and the short answer is that it’s like the ExCo guidelines on “development funding”, just political pork-barreling by another name.

That’s why the whiteboard in the sports ministers office has become such a legend – it doesn’t matter what an electorate’s identified needs are, what counts is whether it’s our safe seat, their safe seat or a marginal.

Same deal with the top-end sports funding that goes to the peak bodies — whatever gets a vote.

Arbib got a report from Crawford last year on ASC funding for the Olympic sports (tennis and football among them) that said it wasn’t delivering on the community health and well-being, was marginalising those sports due to the financial barriers that the elite programs had burdened their grassroots with, nor was there any evidence of kids being influenced in their choice of sport by seeing Aussies on the podium.

That funding paradigm delivers the opposite result to the one intended and the end game is domination of the grassroots sporting landscape by Australian rules and rugby league.

Arbib looked at the politics and decided not to change a thing. Arbib wasn’t going to stick his neck out, he just gave those sports bureaucrats what what they wanted, those bureaucrats gushed all over the sports minister and the ALP in their press releases and Arbib toted up his political capital.

The outcome of the Smith review will be what’s best for the government in the opinion polls so football folk had better get themselves clued up and provide some opposing voices when the club powerbrokers start carrying about their speaking on behalf of the whole football community when they’re rejecting reforms that are designed to skin them of power.

Can Arbib make us the Barcelona of governance?

“Crisis”? What crisis?

Tim Cahill highlights Aussie football's massive problem

A it happens ICF, my “usual take on things” is based largely on refuting the inaccurate myths, folklore and cartoons that have enveloped sport since money entered the equation and got good people talking lies.

Have you written to Tim Cahill to let him know he’s barking up the wrong tree?

How about Han Berger?

SSGs could have been introduced three years earlier than they were if clubs hadn’t been so resistant.

Despite SSGs being the recognised best-practice with reams of supporting evidence, the clubs wouldn’t initiate them themselves and then had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the SSG table with a gun to their heads.

Clubs and coaches pretend they’re following the national curriculum. They pretend — they tick about one box, which is the one they have to tick or they cop financial penalties from the federations. They ignore all the stuff on access, RAE or anything else they can’t be held accountable for.

SSGs are compulsory but the national curriculum promotes the notion of “maximum touches” up to u-15s like the Dutch, German, Italians, French and all the other strugglers — it’s just not enforced like SSGs are.

And what do we do with them the moment compulsory federation-enforced SSGs are done? Twelve years-old are thrown onto full-sized pitches for 11 v 11.

Don’t get me started on the other headings in the national curriculum and blokes who quote them but can’t even be bothered following the instructions, who just cherry-pick it and ignore the stuff that doesn’t suit the cartoon they’ve got running around in their heads about how you do kids’ sokkah proply.

Get back to us when you any one of Australia’s thousands of self-described world-class development coaches has produced a single international on Australian soil like a Tim Cahill who was small and not big for his age as a teen.

Until then parents of talented but undersized kids should look offshore — at least until the Tim Cahill Diminutive Soccer Academy gets underway.

Tim Cahill highlights Aussie football's massive problem

That’s okay Bondy, I read your whole post, every word of it and I know exactly where you’re coming from. Why don’t you go back there?

Tim Cahill highlights Aussie football's massive problem

Ah, Fuss, thank God your here. That bit about “they won’t want to be drawing attention to it” must have put you in a quandary.

Last I heard you were backing FIFA on the grounds that corruption is everywhere. How’s that going? You winning?

You’re right about other sports fiddling the books — we’ve heard in the media all about the penalties they’ve copped .

Nothing from the soccer authorities though? Soccer clubs must be squeaky clean.

Or ….?

That’s right. If cash-in-hand payments are an accepted part of football club culture, so are corrupt administrations

Don’t tell anyone, we’ll all just pretend otherwise and deflect it with the usual tosh about being under the impression everyone else was doing it, even other sports. Yes Mr Waldron, but that doesn’t make it okay.

But you’re telling me you’re not concerned about it — others do it!

I think we can take that as a given that you’re into it too.

How’d your matches go at the weekend? Didja make a few bob?

You realise what the penalties are for knowingly corrupting a football club don’t you Fuss?

How ironic would that be, eh? What’s German for “Banned For Life”?

Changing FIFA's ways starts at grassroots

I’m not expecting a furious response. This argument is the worst nightmare for a lot of folks in the know, they won’t want to be drawing attention to it.

It is a long bow but there are no two ways about it — if under-the-table payments are endemic around grassroots football then so are corrupt clubs.

I think a lot of football insiders know that but they don’t want to think about it, it’s too big to tackle — it’s safer to blame FIFA or FFA or FF-whatever, they won’t graffiti your fence.

My wild and crazy theory is easily dispensed with though — one only has to go to PFA membership records. Did the PFA really have some members kicking around in a Victorian provisional league last season?

Others might be able to explain better than me how a crime graded on the football’s statutes as akin to murdering a FC and then raping it — we’re talking life bans — could ever have become commonplace.

Why aren’t the governors taking clubs to task over it? The governors could hardly be unaware of it — even I’m aware of it.

Until proven otherwise, it’s safe to say that at the heart of the game’s problems with governance is the widely accepted model of a football club that involves wheeling and dealing players and financial chicanery — shady business flying under the radar as amateur sport — and the cost of that deceit has been blind eyes and corruption from the lowliest grassroots clubs to the state federations all the way up to FIFA.

Tell us it ain’t so Fossie … and Harps and all the other paid commentators and insiders. Tell us you know intimately how the game works yet you never knew clubs have been paying amateur registered players, or if you were aware, were ignorant of the implications for the clubs and the game’s governance.

No one even has to conspire, they only have to see something is wrong, work out where their best interests lay and shut up about it.

To tackle corruption in clubs would be to tackle soccer clubs’ own image of themselves. So what if they’re in 27th division? Isn’t it their right to “dabble in the player market” and carry out all the other augmented reality Football Manager fantasies they do around piddly little community clubs?

That might explain the otherwise inexplicable tensions and so-called ethnic divisions too.

Soccer clubs can’t argue soccer politics on money grounds — there’s no money in football! — so they do a Jack Warner: “This isn’t about money, it’s about racism”.

Why don’t soccer clubs don’t just play it straight for the good of the game? That’s the bit I don’t get.

Changing FIFA's ways starts at grassroots

close