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The Australian Socceroos' Mark Viduka kicks the ball in the Australia v Japan opening Group F match at the Soccer World Cup in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Monday, June 12, 2006. This is Australia's first World Cup finals appearance in 32 years. AAP Image/Dave Hunt
Bear with me here, readers, for I’m about to break one of Sheek’s golden rules of citizen sports writing on The Roar: I’m broaching the topic of politics. And by “politics”, I mean “ridiculously stupid political decisions.”
Last week, ACT Sports Minister Andrew Barr declared that Canberra might withdraw its support for a united Australian World Cup football bid, and instead pitch itself as an alternate home for the displaced NRL and AFL competitions.
A bit of background here first: a standard condition of winning the rights to host the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) World Cup is that the host venues become exclusive for the month leading into, and the month of, the tournament itself so as to ensure top-quality surfaces and clean stadiums for the pinnacle of the world game.
In addition to this, FIFA may also require that what it determines to be “major sporting events” not be played in any host cities for the duration of the tournament. Applied locally, if FIFA declare the AFL and NRL competitions to be “major sporting events”, these competitions would either have to be suspended while the World Cup is on, or be played in cities and centres other than host cities, thus ruling out all the state capitals and some major regional cities in Australia.
So this is where the ACT Government have decided to pitch their tent.
Fresh from being overlooked for the A-League’s 12th team in favour of a second Sydney team to kick off in 2011, and despite a third-string Socceroos drawing over 20,000 people to Canberra Stadium in March, the Government is now thinking that there might be more economical benefit in not being a World Cup host city, but rather in playing the caretaker role for the AFL and NRL, should they get temporarily evicted.
The Canberra Times quoted Andrew Barr as saying “[The AFL, NRL and Super15] are going to have to move away from Sydney and Melbourne and it might be strategically to our advantage not to have anything to do with the football World Cup and take extra AFL, rugby league and rugby union [matches] instead.
”If the other competitions aren’t going to go into obedience [with FIFA and suspend action] for that period, then it could be a bonanza for Canberra.
”So we’ll just be strategic in what we do in Canberra because we may be able to get the big tourism benefits that we want without having to outlay $200million on a new stadium.”
Huh, excuse me?!?
How can there possibly be more economic benefit in turning your back on international football followers, in favour of displaced footy fans in Sydney or Melbourne?
The number of Australians that travelled to Germany in 2006, and who will travel to South Africa in 2010, was and is staggering.
Late last week, the Sydney Morning Herald published comments from the head of Tourism and Transport Forum Australia, Christopher Brown, who estimated that something like a million international visitors could be expected for an Australian-hosted World Cup tournament, with a further 250,000 domestic travellers crossing the country following games as well.
Ticket sales could number 4.7 Million for the 64 matches.
Even if Canberra hosted only two games, the share of ticket sales alone could be upwards of $4 Million (based on 40,000 seats at $50 each – conservative to the extreme). And the international and interstate travellers still have to get there and stay somewhere. And eat, drink and be merry, as happens at World Cups.
The direct quote from Christopher Brown was, ”That would provide a massive boost to the economy, generating an estimated $3.9 billion in direct expenditure and creating the equivalent of 74,000 full-time jobs. It is expected to boost GDP by an incredible $5.3 billion. The entire nation should get behind this bid.”
So how is turning your back on a slice of international and domestic tourism pie this big possibly bettered by hoping to lure 5000 displaced day-trippers – at best – wanting to watch Penrith play Cronulla, or North Melbourne play the Western Bulldogs?
As it is, the $200 Million the ACT Government was “having to outlay” for stadium upgrades would almost certainly have to come from Commonwealth funding toward the World Cup anyway, and so could essentially be kissed goodbye with this “strategic” action.
I should mention too, this is the same government who in May this year announced a 25 year Master Plan for upgrades of Canberra’s major sporting venues. And what do you know, this very Master Plan includes a reason for preparation, among others, “to support a possible Australian Soccer World Cup bid.”
Unsurprisingly, there’s been very little public comment about this move from either Canberra Stadium, or the A-League bid leader, Ivan Slavich. Slavich, who in his day-job is also the boss of local utilities company ActewAGL, has over the weekend voiced his frustration about the lack of explanation of Canberra missing the 12th A-League licence, but he’s hardly Robinson Crusoe on that front.
Slavich probably shouldn’t be holding his breath for an explanation of “…because you’re governed by a group of noted deep-thinkers and intellectuals.”
In what is now becoming a bit of a mess for football in Canberra, there can only be one loser, and that, unfortunately, is the National Capital’s sporting public.
It’s hard to see the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) allowing Canberra to host any more Socceroos matches any time soon, and it’s probably just as hard to see an A-League team based in Canberra either, considering a large part of their financial base was government money.
And without any likelihood of hosting World Cup matches, the Canberra Stadium Master Plan is now just a glossy brochure with pretty pictures and no chance of being anything else but.
Adelaide United coach Aurelio Vidmar’s infamous “pissant town” comments could now easily be applied to Canberra too.
The worst of all this is that this isn’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last, dumb ACT Government decision like this.