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Whatever happens at tonight’s FIFA World Cup vote, a lot of credit must go to FFA chairman Frank Lowy and his team. We shouldn’t forget Australia is a small fish in a big pond, and Lowy and company have given us every chance of succeeding in winning 2022 hosting rights with a well-orchestrated bid campaign.
In fact, barely a decade ago, such a bid from Australia would have been completely audacious given the game’s issues with internal politics back then.
We shouldn’t forget the game has come a long way in a short period of time. But we shouldn’t cease being ambitious just for that fact.
In my opinion, Australia has given itself its best chance of winning hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup. That’s not to say the bid campaign hasn’t had its problems.
It has.
There were the ground-sharing issues with the other sporting codes, particularly the AFL, which caused a fuss, before the Memorandum of Understanding was signed in May this year.
There was also the report from The Age which challenged the conduct of the bid due to the way taxpayer funds where being used, which the FFA denied before launching a defamation action on the newspaper.
These issues, though, had been essentially out of the FFA’s control when they emerged, but the code’s governing body worked well to deal with them in both instances.
Full credit to them for that, but some have argued the FFA’s pre-occupation with the World Cup bid and dealing with events like this has affected the way they’ve run the A-League which, in my opinion, has plenty of truth to it and is one criticism which can be aimed at Lowy’s team.
Moving on though, the whole 2022 World Cup bid race has been an interesting campaign with the issues of bribery, corruption and collusion, but Lowy and co have wisely steered clear of these issues and not got involved pointing fingers.
As a result the Australia bid appears to have been fairly well received, with a lot of goodwill. Australia, after all, isn’t a country which many people bear grudges against.
Whether or not that’s enough to win Australia the right to host the 2022 World Cup is a separate question. Australia will rely on its key selling points – it’s a safe option and has a good record with big events – to do that.
Unfortunately our key selling points are matched by rival bids, with the US appearing to trump us in those departments and then bettered by the fact the 1994 World Cup was the most successful tournament in terms of revenue ever.
In some ways, circumstances have harmed Australia’s hopes, especially being up against the US bid.
There’s also the fact there are three bids from the Asian confederation battling it out for 2022, meaning votes within the AFC will not be guaranteed for Australia. Far from it and we may not even get past the first round of voting, which would be an anti-climax.
The corruption scandal which has left Oceania chief Reynald Temarii without a vote – likely to go to Australia – hasn’t helped either.
But rather than focusing on things beyond Australia’s control, the point I want to make is it has been pleasing and encouraging to observe the way Lowy’s team have run our bid campaign.
It’s been fairly smooth, professional, well-mannered and well-organised. In the long run, even if Australia don’t succeed in the bid, it has put us on the map in the big pond that is the football world, and generated alot of goodwill for our cause.
We shouldn’t forget in the modern era rarely do nations win World Cup hosting rights at their first attempts (Japan/Korea 2002 is an exception) but some of those who have missed out have gone onto host World Cups down the track (US missed out in 1986 before winning 1994, and South Africa missed out in 2006 before winning 2010).
Whether or not Australia will be in a position to bid for another World Cup in the not too distant future – should we miss out for 2022 – is hard to know but Lowy and his team’s well-run bid campaign has set the standard and put us on the map and that’s very pleasing considering where we were barely a decade ago.
But for now, let’s hope we won’t need to worry about our next World Cup bid for a while just yet.
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