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Adriano Pellegrino for the Glory and Osama Malik for Queensland during the match between the Perth Glory and the North Queensland Fury in Perth, Friday, Aug. 6, 2010. (AAP Image/Tony McDonough)
In theory the FFA Cup is a winner: uniting the A-League with the grassroots of the game while satisfying the demands of football purists. But the practicalities of the tournament will determine whether it’s a success or failure.
After all, there are so many details that need to be worked out with few clues from the FFA on the makeup of the competition. And while we have been quick to praise the FFA for putting it so high on the agenda (and deservingly so), we are yet to hear the nitty gritty of how the competition would work.
The practicalities of an FFA Cup pose so many questions, such as:
Who?
Just how many state league teams will be incorporated into the competition?
As has been stressed in the last week, the FFA Cup needs to be more than a token effort in incorporating football’s second tier and beyond.
We don’t want to see just premiers of the respective state leagues included in the competition, but rather a competition that embraces as many clubs and leagues as possible.
The problem here is finding a happy medium between practicality and a Utopian competition, a la the FA Cup in England.
It obviously needs to be commercially viable for A-League clubs – preferably one that can open up another revenue stream – and affordable for their much smaller state league counterparts, particularly with the prospect of significant travel for those clubs.
Perhaps the FFA is openly discussing a Cup competition to test the waters for potential sponsors and broadcasters. After all, the competition is likely to need a naming rights sponsor or the like to bankroll the travel costs for state league teams and sell the competition to punters.
It would be great if clubs from different state leagues could meet in the preliminary rounds, rather than keep them in their respective states, but obviously travel costs could preclude that.
If finances don’t allow, the FFA should resist the temptation to include as few state leagues clubs as possible and consider a state-based opening few rounds system, so, for example, Victorian teams met up until a certain point before the competition opens up and goes national.
They key point here is hopefully as many state league clubs as possible are incorporated.
What?
Let’s get this straight: a knockout Cup competition may part of the football’s makeup, but it isn’t in Australia’s sporting landscape.
Australia’s sporting codes exist around one single competition and prize.
There are no secondary competitions in addition to the main premiership races (ignoring pre-season competitions, which don’t overlap with the seasons proper). There’s only won prize AFL clubs battle over, for example.
Bearing this in mind, the FFA Cup may be a hard sell beyond football purists.
And with an FFA Cup, the A-League regular season and finals series, would the game be confusing an already disinterred market with two separate competitions (three if you consider the A-League finals series separate)?
That’s surely a concern considering the struggle to sell the A-League to mainstream Australia.
And further to that point is whether the FFA Cup’s creation should force the FFA to do away with the A-League finals series; mimicking the European game with the league awarded to the top of the table team after the home and away season and the knockout competition satisfying the demands for a grand finale.
That debate will surely rear its head, fuelling the argument for those who are against an A-League finals series.
When?
Timing is critical. With the FFA finally acknowledging future A-League seasons may be pushed back to an October start, to avoid the AFL/NRL overlap, the FFA Cup could help fill the void in August-September. Unlike pre-season tournaments and matches, it will certainly mean more.
But the knockout competition needs to be carefully assimilated into the football calendar so as not to disrupt the A-League season’s momentum too severely, or to disappear from view for an extended period.
It’ll be a delicate balance if it overlaps with the A-League season.
And will it really start in 2011? Is the FFA being a tad over-ambitious in setting a possible start date of next year, at a time when the focus should perhaps be on saving the fledgling Sydney Rovers franchise and solidifying a 12-team A-League?
2011 is the year when the Asian Football Confederation will review Asian Champions League allocations, and without a promotion and relegation system from a second-tier league, a knockout competition is the only means to try and satisfy the AFC’s demands.
But let’s hope the FFA isn’t rushing the creation of the competition, and enough consideration is given to how it will work and who will be involved.
Getting those details right will be imperative to the competition’s wellbeing and achieving its desired goal: uniting the top tier of the game to the lower tiers.
Where?
The FFA Cup is a chance for the game to get into suburban grounds, away from the giant stadiums it struggles to fill.
It’s a chance for the game to get into the heart of its communities. A chance for state league clubs and players to show their worth on a bigger stage and a chance for A-League clubs to get into their respective state communities and sell themselves to the disenfranchised fans who never embraced them.
The latter can only be achieved if the FFA Cup, as opposed to the A-League, has a suburban base.
Ultimately, however, one key question hovers over the proposed FFA Cup: will it act as an olive branch between the A-League and the lower tiers of the game, namely former NSL supporter bases?
Many see the FFA Cup as “new football” finally embracing “old soccer”, to borrow a phrase from the Crawford Report.
Some may fear that the knockout competition could further polarise the dichotomy between “old” and “new” – an “us” against “them” mentality could emerge.
However, an FFA Cup would finally link the A-League to the grassroots, uniting tiers – and that can only bring about positive developments, hopefully burying the divide brought about by the A-League’s creation.
It would force A-League clubs into direct contact with the grassroots, through state leagues clubs, and that can only be a good thing for both their sakes.
With relegation and promotion not an option in the Australian game (it would be a sure way to kill-off support for already financially strained clubs), it’s the only option to embrace clubs such as South Melbourne, Adelaide City and co into a national competition, giving them a chance to compete in something greater than their state leagues.
The FFA Cup is the vehicle to unite football in this country, but it needs to be done right, with the key questions of who, what, where and when needing to be carefully considered before it is rushed into.