Better late than never, but is it too late to rescue the perception that pervades in the broader community that the standard of the A-League is average? That’s how a friend, on the weekend, assessed the popular theory being espoused that the standard of the competition has lifted this season.
Everyone has been jumping on the bandwagon, talking up the improved standard of the competition. “When one person says it, they all say it,” was how he summed it up.
There’s no doubt the theory is accurate.
Spurred by the influx of some positive foreign managers, all trying to play the game in the proactive way (take a bow John van’t Schip, Rini Coolen and Franz Straka), and the locals keeping up with the Jones’, the standard this season has taken another giant leap, its biggest yet.
But largely ignored has been the fact that there was a vast improvement in the technical standards last season, from a dire season four to a vibrant and very watch-able season five.
It all started, to my mind, with the arrival of Vitezslav Lavicka to our shores. Instilling a professional and humble attitude throughout the club, Sydney FC dished up a tactically organised and technical sophisticated brand built on transition, both into defence and offence.
The fact their conservative style has been left behind this season is a sign that the bar has been lifted even further, as if Steven Hooker or Sergey Bubka just joined the competition.
The reality, last season, is that Sydney weren’t the only team performing, with at least four others (50 percent of the competition), in Wellington Phoenix, Melbourne Victory, Gold Coast United and the Newcastle Jets dishing up some very watch-able football.
Even Perth Glory, towards the end of the campaign, were worth catching, while Adelaide United’s form in the final third of the season was certainly the antithesis to what we’d seen in the first two-thirds of the regular season.
The likes of Mathew Leckie and Michael Marrone were catching the eye well before Christmas.
Little wonder I was able to come up with these lists in summarising the season.
The unfortunate thing though was that there were very few out there recognising the quality of last season, let alone spreading the message.
It was all about the issues and off field problems.
Even within the governing body, it was invariably reactionary. While attention was no doubt consumed by the World Cup bid, there was no-one out there assessing the standard of the competition, telling Joe Public about the vast improvement from season four to five, managing the media, both football and wider, in a proactive manner.
With the national manager of the time, Pim Verbeek, off in Europe preparing for the World Cup, missing the opening two months of the season, who was on the front foot?
Instead Verbeek’s season four comments about the standard of the competition, true at the time, stuck. The perception was there.
When News Limited went to town, early last season, on the declining crowds, who was out there talking up the improved standard, how the league was finally worth watching? Who was providing the honest assessment?
Instead the league was getting a hiding, from all and sundry; the national manger, the mainstream media and the football media, bloggers, columnists and TV pundits alike.
Perhaps, as it’s been put to me by more than one close observer, they simply didn’t know, and wouldn’t know, that standards were on the rise, right in front of their eyes.
It is a theory which has some merit.
I laughed this week at the suggestion by Frank Lowy that the Sydney crowds have stopped showing up because of their fickle nature and poor results. More spin.
Even last season, with the team playing swashbuckling football at the SFS, the crowds really didn’t respond in great numbers. But for the 25,000 that showed up for the premiership decider, SFS crowds hovered between 10,000 and 15,000 all season.
Hard to shake off the perception.
When the A-League kicked off in 2005, fans were promised “new football”, exciting football. Football fans were urged to back it and show the faith.
No doubt enticed by the perception of being part of something fresh, they did, giving the league its early impetus.
The pity was that the standard, for the first four seasons, was rather dire in most pockets, but for the odd bit of sparkle from the Central Coast Mariners (season one), the Victory (seasons two and four) and the Jets (seasons two and three).
Too often though the league, in its early years, was the domain of dud managers, dud recruits, dud tactics and dud technical decisions, all for an absolute premium as ticket prices rose year on year.
It was little wonder then that the fans, many of them long time football followers, many new, walked away.
The irony now is that the technical standards are up, perhaps where they should have been at the beginning. Had that been the case, the enticed fans might have stuck around.
But with the game buried on pay TV for at least a couple more years (Fox could help its own cause and that of the league by on-selling a game a week – Friday night – to OneHD, and the FFA could help by facilitating such a move, if it isn’t already) and the honeymoon with the mainstream press and broader community well and truly over, there is much rebuilding to be done.
Foremost is the need get the mainstream media on side, manage the message in a proactive and honest way and get some of the goodwill back. But that will take plenty of know-how and attention to detail.
AussieHool
Guest
I can't agree with you Tony, NSL for eva!
Australian Football
Roar Guru
Hardly disinterested, Eamonn, I can remember watching TWG on Sundays in the first 3 years on the HAL where TWG sent out their roving reporters from Sydney to Perth to conduct interviews in the Stadium car parks, because FOX TV would not allow SBS cameras inside the grounds to conduct any interviews with the players and mangers. TWG was treated like a leper by the FFA and FOX, after many years of faithful service and support. Not even allowed a small TV hi-lights package to show on their programme. However, that did not stop them still having a segment discussing all matters concerning the HAL good and bad with progress football results with their car park interviews. How shabby was that? And what a disgrace treating a long serving Football network who gave years of good service promoting Australian Football.
Australian Football
Roar Guru
My apologies Rellum---it went straight over my head :)
Rellum
Roar Guru
That was more of a sarcastic jibe aimed at the usual anti SBS forumites.
RobD
Guest
Well said AF. You have to wonder if the people bagging SBS on here actually watch the show. What do they think SBS should have done?
jimbo
Roar Guru
My wife brought home a Daily Rugby League Telegraph with the shopping today to my great surprise as we never buy that newspaper. She said they were giving them away at the checkout at the supermarket - obviously because they weren't selling. I took a look at it and here's a summary: Front Page: 3 rugby league stories. Back Page: 2 rugby League stories. "Sports" Section: 12 pages of Rugby League, 1 page AFL, 1 page Racing, 2 pages athletics and a promotion on Usain Bolt. A-League: zilch zero coverage - not one word about the A-League game tonight Champions League: zilch, zero coverage EPL: zilch, zero coverage Is media coverage of sport biased?
jimbo
Roar Guru
Edmund, I have trouble believing anything you say, beginning with "I watch 3 A-League games a week" given all the faults you find with it. Are you just a figment of another "Soccer Knocker's" imagination.
Brother Mouzone
Guest
Pity it is all unravelling. Will there be another A-League season? That new tv deal is a few years too far away.
Art Sapphire
Guest
Fussball, players like Diaby, Song, Sagna, Clichy are great athletes. There are thousands of players out there with great technical foundation but they don't work hard enough to become elite footballers. Because it's not enough just being a footballer you have to be an athlete as well in the modern game.
Art Sapphire
Guest
The Bush - 20/20 and limited overs is the reason for lucrative player contracts. Seems to me that for half these tragics, cricket is just The Ashes and nothing else.
Eamonn Flanagan
Guest
Real Football Gym work really isn't that important for speed in the modern game - certainly not at the expense of technique. Sure you need to be strong but professional athletes beyond age of 20 or so must have gained most of their strength; technique needs to be improved continually and can be particularly with the short season in Asutralia and seems many clubs and players are not taking advantage of the long off-season to improve; something Dwight Yorke noted when he was with Sydney. He wasnt wanting the boys into the gym more - he wanted more ballwork. Comparing 100m runners, guys who do 1 run and 1 run only to a 90 minute footballler making short sharp bursts is not really relevant. No footballer runs 100 metres, maybe 30 metres at full pace at best - only a few run 70 metres flat out in a game. So the training required is the ability to move fast over the first few yards. Excessive, if anytime in the gym isn't really needed beyond some general strength stuff but this can be easily obtained without the use of weights.
Eamonn Flanagan
Guest
Australian Football - if I was to sum up SBS over the first three years of A-League football I'd say it was disinterested at best, negative at worst - and pretty unprofessional. And if you talk to fellow Aussie fans I'm sure you'll get more who agree with me than yourself on this one. So while we disagree my views are hardly reckless from the range of people I talked to I'd say mainstream. And why was show clipped from Sunday; I'd suggest because that negativity went thru to lower viewer figures. Looking at the A-League and always comparing it to the overseas leagues was in my view pretty stupid given that was where the local fans turned to get football news if they didn't have Fox. And blind freddy knows we are where we are in terms of skill, funds and coaches; and surprise after 5 years it is changing. Did we really need to be bagged all the way by the only FTA tv station to take the game seriously? They spent more time on O/S football than Aussie and spent many minutes bagging teams - hardly ever hear teams in UK get bagged the way SBS can do it, and many EPL teams are just not pretty. Seems to me the SBS team headed by Les and Fozzie had a little bit of the old Aussie so-called cultural cringe - now that's funny when you think about it.
Axel V
Guest
Hernandez is one for Melbourne Victory, best player in the A-League. He is fat and slow but has the touch of silk!
Australian Football
Roar Guru
Not at all. All the negative comments came from Pim Verbeek who could not organise a national team from HAL players who could not beat a weaken Melb Vic team without Archie and Muskie who were playing against them in a practice match. Labeling them as hopeless that the Melbourne press picked up on.
Australian Football
Roar Guru
Foz has been honest and called it how it was. He has nothing to answer for except he should have gone in harder on Pim Verbeek calling for his axing 1 year before the world cup.
Rellum
Roar Guru
Come on AF, don't you know all the A-Leagues problems are all down to negative comments from Fozzie.
Midfielder
Guest
Eamonn & Real HHHMMMMMMMm interesting what you say about ball work... I can testify to the fact that even at a more mature age your ball skills can improve... This could be helped tonight by the dinner I just cooked and the wine I consumed cooking it..
The Bush
Guest
Art Sapphire, If, as you say, nobody has time to watch test cricket, except cricket tragics, them how come CA still get's paid such large amounts of money for the TV rights that they can afford to pay test players hundreds of thousands of dollars as well as proping up the Sheffield Shield and funding grass roots cricket? Surely you don't think all the income comes from the ten or so one day games and the pair of T20's each summer? In case you miss it this year, there should be a couple of hundreed thousands 'tragics' at the Ashes this year, spread out over a maximum of 25 days.
Australian Football
Roar Guru
Eamonn, your account of SBS and crew bagging the HAL for five years is reckless and not true. Yes SBS made a critical analysis of the first year of the HAL and compared it to the NSL as not much better if at all. Surely that is just an opinion that can be expressed. But from then on SBS had discussions on the HAL full of praise––one discussion I remember was Adelaide United’s amazing run in the ACL. I had never missed an episode of TWG and your take on SBS TWG is far different from mine. They criticised certain Clubs for playing a boring British hoof and run game mainly CCM’s brand of football but full of praise for teams who were trying to play a good short passing game of football like the Brisbane Roar, Melb Victory, Litti’s SFC and GCU’s first year. You can't say they bagged the entire HAL as a whole over 5 years because that is not true. They definitely threw scorn on teams like Auckland, CCM and Glory for sticking with out of date British coaching methods, but you would have to agree with that surely..?
Realfootball
Guest
A full time pro should have no trouble doing the ball work AND the gym work over a week. A lot of footballers can't see the point in gym work. Wrong! The stronger you are, the faster you are. Frankly, quite a few professional footballers look like they could do with some gym work. Talk to a 100 metre sprinter about the importance of upper body strength.