It is said that if you forget the lessons of history, you will repeat the same mistakes, Arguably, the Crawford Report is the most significant report on Football in Australia.
The report left no doubt about the root cause of where football found itself: broke, corrupt, inept management, few if any national polices, driven and run by self-interest.
The core of the problems lied in the management team and the management structure, with a national competition run by clubs whose base support was ethnic driven.
There were over-reactions to these clubs. Simon Hill’s famous article, Can you Smell the Fear, was based on one such reporting of a Sydney United game when race riots were reported massively in the press but at the rugby league match the same day, more than ten times the arrests were made without even a mention in the media.
However, where there is smoke, there is fire and without doubt the behaviour of some fans at some of the old NSL ethnic based clubs let the mainstream media take pot shots at football.
I have often said football caused its own problems in the past. This has lead to the uneasy feeling between Old Soccer and New Football.
Without doubt, the traditional mainstream media that supports the AFL and NRL would love some of those old NSL stories to reappear in the A-League. It could do enormous damage to link new football and old soccer riots with A-League FA Cup crowd behaviour together.
Many critics and long term football fans have asked, nay begged, now demand, that the old NSL clubs be brought back into the fold. The much mooted FA Cup is often seen as the way to unite the old and the new.
SBS often run articles outlining the need to unite and how beneficial this will be. In this light, I was reading an SBS blog on the need for an FA Cup and a poster posted the following comment:
“I’m one of the many old NSL supporters who now follows an A-League club and the A-League in general and I’m still not convinced, 6 years on, that the danger of our sport shooting itself in the foot one more (and perhaps for the last time) has disappeared.
“To this day my old club Sydney Olympic is still supported only by Greeks, Sydney United only by Croatians, APIA by Italians and so on.
“Is that fact more acceptable today than back in 2004 when our successful A-League was created without the inclusion of mono-ethnic clubs and is it in the long-term interests of our sport to throw these mono-ethnic clubs a lifeline by re-engaging them in a national-type competition once again?
“The newer followers of our national competition wouldn’t know how dangerous or even fatal for our sport that might prove to be, but us older supporters know from bitter experience that the old saying ‘soccer always manages to shoot itself in the foot’ is just an innocuous move like this one away.”
The question I ask is: are the clubs and fans of the more hard core NSL clubs ready to abide by the crowd behaviour rules, including national slogan issues.
My own interpretation is Frank Lowy and the FFA are terrified of what the press will do to football if ever a major crowd behaviour incident took place. I remember MV and SFC supporters simply chanting was reported in the Melbourne press as a riot.
I guess this is one of the reasons FFA is so strict on home ends, but that is another article in itself.
In any family, for a reunion to take place, there needs to be some recognition of sins of the past and some kind of resolution that we accept we did wrong and will not do the bad stuff again.
My reading of the Tea Leafs is that as football grows, its media has to grow as well.
In this respect, SBS could be a great deal of help.
SBS has history and many connections with the NSL clubs. SBS has never admitted (because it encouraged) the NSL ethnic based clubs did anything wrong.
SBS often write about the benefits the NSL clubs could bring to the FFA and the A-League. SBS never talk about the other side of the coin: what harm some of the still ethnic clubs could do if their fans played up.
SBS could lead the NSL clubs to a place where the risk of an incident or incidents that could damage football are very minor, present this to FFA and help unite the tribes.
This would be good for football and good for SBS.
Barry
Guest
Sydney FC played Sydney United in a friendly last year....
Gweeds
Guest
I can see the link between the 'ethnicity issue' and the Crawford Report, but in one sense while it was the elephant in the room, it wasn't overtly the focus of the recommendations. The full report is still on the web if anyone wants to see it. http://fulltext.ausport.gov.au/fulltext/2003/soccerinquiry/reportfull.pdf
deadman
Guest
The crawford report is no longer relevent since most of the voting stuctures and governence structures are already in place and have evolved from those recommendations in the report ethnic clubs are but a few small insignificant dot points in it, mostly in appendix G
Rob
Guest
So the NSL clubs were run by idiots but at the same time, by some romantic re imagining of history, Im expected to believe that the league was also awash with unheralded geniuses in tracksuits who are now sadly lost to the game. Well folks, i played to 2nd grade level and it just wasnt so.
David V.
Guest
The league undeniably produced great teams and great players. Let's not forget too that the Parramatta Power side of the league's dying years was virtually a who's who of the A-League. In most leagues there is a gap between good and bad teams but in the chaotic and unprofessional NSL, this was exacerbated even more.
Hoolifan
Guest
"NSL produced the best players and matches in Australian soccer history." Really when? I watched it for years and years. It was okay in the top 4 clubs or so, but the rest were rubbish. How exactly are semi pro teams going to match it with fully pro teams?
David V.
Guest
The old Soccer Australia was not alone among sporting bodies run by incompetents, people who were not there for the betterment of the game but for personal gain.
Midfielder
Guest
Cpaa Very true ... without doubt the NSL produced all the best things in Football in Australia for years .. and equally all the worst things... the NSL was not all bad in fact most of it was good with hard working and often very miss understood people... The real shame of the NSL was a vast amount of football knowledge has been lost ... not because of the the A-League but because many of the NSL clubs have not had the ability to retain and build upon football knowledge they where gifted by many migrants... Those who ran the game where not one a single group of inept corrupt people... more a lot of hard working folk who where IMO led down by a few people at the top ... chief among these was Sir Arthur George ... but that is all in the past... We move forward with the history we created .. the good parts the bad parts and the ugly parts... but we cannot escape our past and can we risk the ugly parts of the NSL being associated with our new A-League... HHHHMMMmmm sobering we need to come together but is everybody ready on all sides...
The Fun Cool Man
Roar Rookie
Well written. Midfielder, credit to your article also, was written well.
Cpaaa
Roar Pro
I do see a lot of beauty in all of this. This is all about Australian Football history and we are creating it as we move along. No where else on earth will you get such stories like Australian Football. Ethnic Clubs are Australian Football clubs to, and that should never be forgotten, but embraced. Heres a passage from the late Johnny Warrens Book SW&P Johnny Warren "The need for migrants to form their own clubs exposes some unwelcome realities of Australian society. Many football clubs already in existence-typical Aussie district clubs-refused access to some migrants. The measuring stick for determining suitability to join their club was,too often, proficiency in english. It is one of the ironies i have observed that people within football should discriminate in ways so similar to ways in which the game itself has been discriminated against by Australian Society at large. The Wog clubs didnt inflict the discrimination which was their struggle.For them football was always the currency. It didnt matter to them what someone looked like. It only mattered that they could play football. The late Charlie Perkins told the story that the Greek and Croatian clubs in Adelaide, and later the pan Hellenic club in Sydney, were the first Australians to recognise him as a person to be treated equally.Charlies football career commenced before the 1967 referendum moved to include Aborigines as part of the official population of Australia. The axiom of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" rang true and as such , both Charlie Perkins and non-English speaking migrants shared a bond through the common enemy of racism. Charlie became hugely popular in the migrant football communities primarily because he was a good footballer. To be finally accepted as an equal was a powerful social panacea for Dr. Perkins. To achieve that sense of equality, on an individual level as well as on behalf of his people, was the summation of his lifes mission. Football assuaged that passage for Charlie, from which point his charm took over and his relationship with the football community was forged -truly, madly and deeply, for life. Indeed, it was Pan Hellenic (now Olympic Sharks) who paid his way through university, in return for his playing services and Charlie became only the second Aborigine to graduate from university in Australia.".......
David V.
Guest
The point I'm making is we don't need all that sort of thing in Australia. We pride ourselves on being a free country, and many of us are glad for the opportunities this country has given us. Many who fled countries like Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, etc have nothing but gratitude to the UK, Australia, USA, Canada, Brazil, and so forth for taking them in.
Dogz R Barkn
Roar Guru
In short, no. The Olympic lobby has far too much clout - how else can you explain tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money being directed to idiotic sports that the bulk of Australians would normally have absolutely nothing to do with. Twirling a ribbon becomes an Olympic sport, and all of a sudden that justifies millions of dollars of expenditure because of that fact alone - never mind that extremely few Australians are actually interessted in twirling a ribbon.
Forgetmenot
Guest
Well written article. Interesting thing is that there are now three 'Crawford Reports'. One on football was first which was the impetus for an Independent Commission in the AFL. The second was soccer which has proved to be the most changing one out of them all. The third is the newest and possibly most controversial and recommends funding cuts on the Olympics. The first two were implemented which huge success, with football outgrowing league to become Australias premier football code, and arguably premier sport. And also soccer came out the shadows and is currently a mainstream sport. Will the findings of the third be implemented??
BigAl
Guest
Well, tennis has copped a fair dollop from the press
apaway
Guest
Thanks David. These things are often dismissed too simplistically with an attitude akin to "You're in Australia now, forget about all that past history." As a player in the old NSL, I realised that it was far more complex than that, having talked and played with players of Croatian background.
David V.
Guest
We see them bring their crap to things like tennis, basketball, water polo, etc. But go to Croatia and Serbia today, people are trying hard to move on from the ruinous wars of the 90s, because they have to make ends meet. They don't want conflict anymore.
jimbo
Roar Guru
Good article Mid and to harness the collective force of Australia’s football clubs who started as ethnic clubs would be awesome for the code. On the ethnic issue, I’m sure there is also unrest at the Serbian Club Vs Croatian Club darts games, snooker games, bocce games or card games too. (No offence to Serbians or Croatians - just an example) But the press chooses to focus on football because it is a competitor to the sports they have heavily invested in. Like the Daily Rugby League Telegraph and the NRL – they are 50% shareholders - of course they are going to rubbish the opposition at every opportunity. Their objective isn’t to highlight ethnic violence and help stop it, but to rubbish football, otherwise they’d send their reporters to the bocce games too.
jimbo
Roar Guru
Yes but as Mid says, there is still the potential for the FFA to shoot itself in the foot. SBS’s criticisms of the A-League and the FFA would be ignored if there was no truth in them. The FFA are still good targets for mud slinging. But hey, no one’s perfect and we improve over time. Some of the decisions made by the FFA are often to maximise revenue and not to enhance the league and the fans’ experience. The FFA have dropped the ball on the A-League a bit this season to focus on the WC bid – they are stretched financially again. The marketing and promotion of the A-League has been very poor and no wonder crowds keep falling – simple solutions the competitors have taken like free tickets for juniors and registered players, free buses to games, family fun days, entertainment etc. They also allow rich owners like Con COnstantine and Clive Palmer too much freedom and they end up ruining it for everyone else, including their own fans.
David V.
Guest
You have to tell it like it is...
Midfielder
Guest
David V Powerful stuff ...