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The football gods really do have a wicked sense of humour. Yesterday, as agencies began trying to get rid of an overabundance of tickets for Saturday’s friendly between the Socceroos and Paraguay in Sydney, by offering cut prices, Melbourne Heart’s match against their city rivals officially sold-out.
Sydney Morning Herald football writer Sebastian Hassett summed things up perfectly when he tweeted, “Melbourne sells out an A-League game; Sydney can’t give away tickets to watch Cahill, Kewell, Schwarzer etc vs (World Cup quarter finalists). Infuriatingly pathetic.”
There’s a discussion that needs to be had about what is going on in Sydney, but for today, I think the Australian football community deserves to enjoy a success for a change.
While you can bet discussion at last night’s Australian Football Awards lingered on concern over the low ticket sales in Sydney, the news south of the Murray really was special and only improves the closer you look at it.
Melbourne Heart’s low membership numbers, coupled with the fact Victory members had to buy their own tickets to the game, means the overwhelming majority of people attending tonight’s game have purchased tickets specifically for this game (as opposed to attending on their memberships).
For close to 30,000 people to do so is a spectacular number for any domestic sporting event but for the A-League, beset with dwindling attendances, it almost feels like a miracle.
At the very least the derby is the shot in the arm the league desperately needs.
It’s hard to know exactly what the make up of the crowd will be, but a reasonable amount of curious parties without any specific A-League allegiances will be in attendance and that’s the key to this game. Not the result or the capacity crowd.
In my opinion, the derby can only be considered a complete success if some of these casual fans return for future games.
Yet judging by one comment I heard at a packed pre-match press conference on Thursday, I’m starting to worry about whether the A-League will take full advantage of this game.
As the Heart and Victory representatives entered the AAMI Park theatrette, that was filled with a mix of mainstream and football media, one of them turned to the crowd and muttered a snide remark about the end of the AFL season being the only reason so many people were here.
It was a cheap and unnecessary thing to say and it’s not the first time I’ve heard it muttered in public by a member of an A-League club.
For better or worse, the game needs to embrace, and eventually be embraced by, the mainstream media and it comes back to my concerns I raised on this site earlier in the week over the attitude towards media and marketing opportunities that prevails in some parts of the A-League.
I hope Football Federation Australia will endeavour to stamp this out because these sorts of opportunities are rare.
The Melbourne derby might not be Australia’s first intra-city derby, there’s been plenty of those over the years, but it is the A-League’s.
Yesterday Kevin Muscat said, “most players would probably say (the derby)’s just another game, but I don’t think it is,” and he’s right.
Tonight’s match is such an important one for so many reasons and I hope it will be a wonderful occasion both in the stands and on the football pitch.
Now lets make the most of it.
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